CHESS NOTATION
chess is a game that its long and fantastic history can define. the game was played thousands and hundred of years ago. games from years ago could be analyzed and played out today, even by modern-era chess engines. this fantastic possibility is available by chess notation. chess notation is a way chess games are recorded. is used in chess literature and this is how players of all levels keep a record of a game that they either played or an ongoing one. at the start of the system, people used long and complicated narratives to describe each move. today these moves had evolved into short and compact systems.
today the most simple and common form of chess notation is called algebraic notation. it labels the grid of chess squares with horizontal and vertical symbols - letters and numbers.
as we can see in the picture the letters are representing the different files while the numbers are representing a rank(or row). whites place his pieces at the first and second rank of the board and black on the seventh and eighth. the letters are represented from right to left (in whites perspective ) and contain the letters a to h.
Let's now look at an example. the white rook is standing at the square -a1. represented by row one and column a. the king is standing at c6 and the bishop is standing in f3.
additionally, to represent the pieces we use capital letters.
K: King
Q: Queen
R: Rook
B: Bishop
N: Knight
P: Pawn (although, by convention, P isnt usually written in the notation).
now let's start writing moves!. to write a move write the name of the piece that wants to move and include the square that the piece wants to go.
if a piece is captured, we include the symbol x before the destination square(note that the piece name should be still written).
lets now look at some examples.
in this position, white played d4- pawn(not written) to the square of d4.
black responded with c5- pawn to the square of c5.
white played Nc3- moving the knight to c3.
black played cxd4. we used the symbol x in this position and, to know that the c pawn captured the pawn we also write the square of the other pawn.
+ is the sign for check, and # is the sign for checkmate.
there are other special symbols as:
0-0: kingside castle
0-0-0: queenside castle
!: good move
?: poor move
(the two last symbols are usually used in chess books).
to avoid ambiguity, when there are two of the same kind of piece (two knights, two rooks) that can move to the same square, we need to be more specific.
Here, Rad1, rook from file a to square d1, solves the problem.
I think that now you are ready to write your chess games!.
we would like for you to share your first chess notation on our site!. we will go over the sheet (for free) and fix your mistakes if needed.