ASCII Chessboard, No HTML Required

📆 2026-05-04 11:33

Following up on my previous post about gemtext tables:

Sometimes, when I have absolutely nothing to do, I play with ASCII characters in vim. Today I made an ASCII chess board with black and white chess pieces. I'm pretty sure I'm not the first one to make an ascii chessboard and I won't be the last. I thought it looks pretty nice so I wanted to share it on my blog.

     A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H
   ┏━━━┯━━━┯━━━┯━━━┯━━━┯━━━┯━━━┯━━━┓
 8 ┃ ♜ │ ♞ │ ♝ │ ♛ │ ♚ │ ♝ │ ♞ │ ♜ ┃ 8
   ┠───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┨
 7 ┃ ♟ │ ♟ │ ♟ │ ♟ │ ♟ │ ♟ │ ♟ │ ♟ ┃ 7
   ┠───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┨
 6 ┃   │   │   │   │   │   │   │   ┃ 6
   ┠───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┨
 5 ┃   │   │   │   │   │   │   │   ┃ 5
   ┠───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┨
 4 ┃   │   │   │   │   │   │   │   ┃ 4
   ┠───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┨
 3 ┃   │   │   │   │   │   │   │   ┃ 3
   ┠───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┨
 2 ┃ ♙ │ ♙ │ ♙ │ ♙ │ ♙ │ ♙ │ ♙ │ ♙ ┃ 2
   ┠───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┨
 1 ┃ ♖ │ ♘ │ ♗ │ ♕ │ ♔ │ ♗ │ ♘ │ ♖ ┃ 1 
   ┗━━━┷━━━┷━━━┷━━━┷━━━┷━━━┷━━━┷━━━┛
     A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H

Depending on the monospace font you have this might look good or not :-)

I did not really have a clever idea for alternating black and white squares. I was thinking about bold borders for black squares and thin borders for white squares but it didn't look good. Do you have a better idea for an ASCII chess board ?

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