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Authors: Peter Kurzdorfer
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notation. The chess master, who has no set or board in sight, calls out her moves. The opponent or opponents, who have sets and boards in front of them and can see the game in progress, call out their response.
Win on Time
You win if your opponent runs out of the allotted time before making the prescribed number of moves in a tournament game. The only way to show that this has indeed happened, though, is to have your game score ready along with the clock that shows the time is up. Obviously this cannot be done unless you have kept a record of the game.
Correspondence and e-mail chess are not possible without chess notation. For that matter, chess played over the telephone and blindfold chess are also prohibitively difficult without a notation system.
There have been more books written about chess than about all other games combined. The game has a wide appeal, and its language is understood all over the world. Knowing the language of chess can put you in touch with people from every corner of the globe.
You Already Know the Basics!
After having just learned how widespread chess is, would it be a surprise to learn that you already know the basics of chess notation? Well, prepare to be surprised, because you already do!
You already know what each square is called, after all, and you know the names of each and every rank and file and diagonal on the board. In addition, you already know the names of all the chess pieces and pawns and the names of their special moves. You also know about check, checkmate, and stalemate.
The chessboard is accompanied by the letters of the files £ and the numbers of the ranks.
Battleship
Have you ever played Battleship? That’s the game where you hide your ships on a grid and try to destroy the ships of your opponent on his grid by calling out coordinates. The grids aren’t checkered, but the grid coordinates are none other than chess square coordinates: e1, g2, h4, a7, etc. All right, so there are a few other things to know about chess notation, but again, you are already familiar with everything here.
Recording Your Opinion
You can record your opinion about a move of a chess game very succinctly: Just use punctuation. The following table of punctuation marks that follow moves is understood all over the world. Whenever you see such punctuation after a move, you know that it is the opinion of the annotator (the one writing about the game).
Punctuation Mark
Meaning
!
A very good or surprising move
!!
A particularly strong and surprising move
?
A weak move
??
A blunder; giving something away
!?
An interesting move
?!
A dubious move that has some strong points
Specifics
Pieces are designated by capital letters: K is for king, Q is for queen, R is for rook, B is for bishop, and N is for knight (not K since that is reserved for the king). The pawn has no symbol. It used to be P, but that has been done away with in the interest of simplicity.
Moves are written as the piece symbol of the piece being moved and the square that piece lands on. Captures are indicated by an x between the piece symbol and the square the capture takes place on. Check is indicated by a + after the move, and checkmate is indicated simply by writing checkmate after the move that produces it. Stalemate is handled in the same way.
Any ambiguities (such as when you have a rook on a1 and a rook on h1 and nothing in between and want to move one of your rooks to d1) are handled by simply adding an extra identifying letter or number. In the case just cited, Rad1 or Rhd1 will convey your meaning precisely.
Keep in mind that all square names and file symbols contain lowercase letters only. Capital letters are reserved for the piece symbols.
Castling is indicated in chess notation by the use of zeros to indicate the number of squares between the king and rook separated by a hyphen. Thus castling kingside looks like 0-0, while castling queenside looks like 0-0-0.
Move Numbers
The moves are all numbered, beginning
Win on Time
You win if your opponent runs out of the allotted time before making the prescribed number of moves in a tournament game. The only way to show that this has indeed happened, though, is to have your game score ready along with the clock that shows the time is up. Obviously this cannot be done unless you have kept a record of the game.
Correspondence and e-mail chess are not possible without chess notation. For that matter, chess played over the telephone and blindfold chess are also prohibitively difficult without a notation system.
There have been more books written about chess than about all other games combined. The game has a wide appeal, and its language is understood all over the world. Knowing the language of chess can put you in touch with people from every corner of the globe.
You Already Know the Basics!
After having just learned how widespread chess is, would it be a surprise to learn that you already know the basics of chess notation? Well, prepare to be surprised, because you already do!
You already know what each square is called, after all, and you know the names of each and every rank and file and diagonal on the board. In addition, you already know the names of all the chess pieces and pawns and the names of their special moves. You also know about check, checkmate, and stalemate.
The chessboard is accompanied by the letters of the files £ and the numbers of the ranks.
Battleship
Have you ever played Battleship? That’s the game where you hide your ships on a grid and try to destroy the ships of your opponent on his grid by calling out coordinates. The grids aren’t checkered, but the grid coordinates are none other than chess square coordinates: e1, g2, h4, a7, etc. All right, so there are a few other things to know about chess notation, but again, you are already familiar with everything here.
Recording Your Opinion
You can record your opinion about a move of a chess game very succinctly: Just use punctuation. The following table of punctuation marks that follow moves is understood all over the world. Whenever you see such punctuation after a move, you know that it is the opinion of the annotator (the one writing about the game).
Punctuation Mark
Meaning
!
A very good or surprising move
!!
A particularly strong and surprising move
?
A weak move
??
A blunder; giving something away
!?
An interesting move
?!
A dubious move that has some strong points
Specifics
Pieces are designated by capital letters: K is for king, Q is for queen, R is for rook, B is for bishop, and N is for knight (not K since that is reserved for the king). The pawn has no symbol. It used to be P, but that has been done away with in the interest of simplicity.
Moves are written as the piece symbol of the piece being moved and the square that piece lands on. Captures are indicated by an x between the piece symbol and the square the capture takes place on. Check is indicated by a + after the move, and checkmate is indicated simply by writing checkmate after the move that produces it. Stalemate is handled in the same way.
Any ambiguities (such as when you have a rook on a1 and a rook on h1 and nothing in between and want to move one of your rooks to d1) are handled by simply adding an extra identifying letter or number. In the case just cited, Rad1 or Rhd1 will convey your meaning precisely.
Keep in mind that all square names and file symbols contain lowercase letters only. Capital letters are reserved for the piece symbols.
Castling is indicated in chess notation by the use of zeros to indicate the number of squares between the king and rook separated by a hyphen. Thus castling kingside looks like 0-0, while castling queenside looks like 0-0-0.
Move Numbers
The moves are all numbered, beginning
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