How to read and write chess notation

Every chess game ever played, in any country and in any language, is written down with the same eight letters and eight numbers. Learn them once and you can read a game from 1858 as easily as one from this morning.

The board has 64 squares, and every one has its own name made of a letter and a number.

• The columns going up and down are files. They are named a to h, from White's left to White's right.
• The rows going across are ranks. They are numbered 1 to 8, starting at White's side.

The letter always comes first, so the bottom left corner for White is a1 and the top right corner is h8. The names never change, whichever side you are playing.

When you set the board up, the square nearest your right hand should be a light square. That check tells you the board is the right way round.

Each piece has one capital letter:

• K is the king.
• Q is the queen.
• R is the rook.
• B is the bishop.
• N is the knight, because K is already taken by the king.

A pawn has no letter at all. When you see a move with only a square name, like e4, a pawn moved there.

So Nf3 means a knight moves to f3, and Qd8 means the queen moves to d8. You write where the piece is going, not where it came from.

A capture is written with a small x between the piece and the square.

Bxf3 means a bishop captures whatever stood on f3.

Pawns have no letter, so a pawn capture starts with the file the pawn came from. exd5 means the pawn on the e-file captures on d5. That is the one case where you write where the piece started.

You never write what was captured. The board already shows that.

These four symbols cover almost everything else you will see:

• + after a move means check: the enemy king is attacked. Bb5+
• # means checkmate and the game is over. Rd8#
• O-O means castling king side and O-O-O means castling queen side. Some books print them with zeros as 0-0 and 0-0-0.
• = marks a promotion, when a pawn reaches the far end and becomes a new piece. a8=Q means the pawn reached a8 and became a queen.

You can use more than one at a time. bxa8=Q+ means a pawn captured on a8, became a queen, and gave check.

Two more will turn up. Some books add e.p. after a capture in passing. At the end of a game you will see 1-0 when White won, 0-1 when Black won, and 1/2-1/2 when the game was drawn.

Sometimes two of your pieces can move to the same square, and the move name would be confusing.

The fix is to add one letter or number to say which piece moved:

1. Add the file letter first, if the two pieces are on different files. Nbd2 means the knight from the b-file, not the other one.
2. Add the rank number if they are on the same file. R1a5 means the rook on the first rank.
3. Only if both are needed, write both, like Qh4e1.

You do this often with knights and rooks, and almost never with anything else.

Games are written in numbered pairs. The number is the move number, then White's move, then Black's move.

Take 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6. White played the pawn to e4 and Black answered with the pawn to e5. Then White played a knight to f3 and Black played a knight to c6.

If you want to write only a black move, put three dots after the number, like 2... Nc6.

In a real tournament you must write your moves down. FIDE's Laws of Chess say each player records every move in algebraic notation. An argument about the position can then be settled from the score sheet.

The most common mistake is writing where the piece came from instead of where it went. Ng1 when the knight left g1 for f3 is wrong; the move is Nf3.

The second mistake is forgetting the file letter on a pawn capture. xd5 means nothing on its own, because the reader cannot tell which pawn took. Write exd5 or cxd5.

Here is a drill that fixes both in a week. Play one game a day and write it down on paper. That evening, set the pieces up and play your own game back from your notes. Any move you cannot follow is a move you wrote badly, and you will not write it that way again.