Lesson 3
Reading and writing chess
Chess has its own way of writing moves down, a bit like a secret code. Once you can read it, you can read any chess book and any puzzle, and follow games that were played hundreds of years ago. You can also write down your own games and look at them again later.
Did you know? The longest tournament game ever recorded was played in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1989. It ran 269 moves and more than 20 hours, and after all that it was a draw. Both players wrote down every single move, which is exactly what you are learning to do on this page.
Every square has a name
Files (up and down) are letters a to h, starting from White's left.
Ranks (across) are numbers 1 to 8, starting from White's side.
The letter always comes first: e4, never 4e.
Every piece has a letter
| Piece | Letter | Example |
|---|---|---|
| King | K | Ke2: king moves to e2 |
| Queen | Q | Qh5: queen moves to h5 |
| Rook | R | Rd1: rook moves to d1 |
| Bishop | B | Bc4: bishop moves to c4 |
| Knight | N | Nf3: knight moves to f3 |
| Pawn | (nothing) | e4: a pawn moves to e4 |
Why is the knight an N? Because K was already taken by the king.
The knight got the second letter of its name instead.
The extra symbols
| Symbol | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
x | captures | Bxc6, and for pawns exd5 |
+ | check | Qa4+ |
# | checkmate | Qxf7# |
O-O | castles kingside | two letter O's |
O-O-O | castles queenside | three letter O's |
=Q | promotes to a queen | e8=Q |
! and ? | a great move / a mistake | Nd5!, Qh5?? |
When two identical pieces could both go to the same square, add where the piece came from:
Nbd2 means "the knight on the b-file goes to d2", and R1e2 means
"the rook on the first rank goes to e2".
A whole game on one line
Here is a real (short!) game written in notation, next to the board it produces. Press Next and follow along on the scoresheet.
| # | White | Black |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | e4 | e5 |
| 2. | Bc4 | Nc6 |
| 3. | Qh5 | Nf6?? |
| 4. | Qxf7# | 1–0 |
The 1–0 at the end means White won. 0–1 means Black won,
and ½–½ means a draw.
Behaving well at the board
Chess players have looked after each other's games for hundreds of years. These are the rules of the club, and they are also the rules of every tournament you will ever play in.
- Shake hands before and after every game. Say "good game" whether you won or lost.
- Touch-move. If you touch one of your pieces, you must move it if there is a legal move. If you let go of it on a square, the move is finished.
- Say "I adjust" before you straighten a piece on its square, so nobody thinks you are moving it. You should not adjust your pieces or mess with the board while it is your opponent's time to play.
- Stay quiet. No talking about the game, no advice from watchers, no sound effects.
- Do not show off when you win, and try not to go quiet and grumpy when you lose. Everybody loses games. What people remember is how you acted afterwards.
- Giving up on purpose is called resigning. It is allowed when a game is truly lost, and it is polite. At club, keep playing anyway. Opponents leave pieces hanging, and stalemates happen.
- If something goes wrong (an illegal move, a knocked-over piece, a disagreement), stop, do not argue, and raise your hand for an adult.
Clocks. We do not use them at club, so take the time you need to think. You will meet one in a tournament: press it with the same hand you moved with, right after your move. The clock counts your thinking time down. If your time runs out and your opponent still has enough pieces to checkmate you, you lose the game, even if you were winning on the board.
Write down your own games
Feel free to bring a notebook to club. Writing a move down takes a few seconds. Afterwards you can play the whole game through again at home and find the exact move where it went wrong. Every strong player in the world does this.