This lesson will be focused on chess notation. Chess notation is a way of keeping track of moves during a game; with this notation a player can replay their game and find their mistakes or areas of improvement. As a chess player I think it’s really important skill to have so I’ll be explaining it!
The Pieces
Each piece has it’s own abbreviated name help to identify which piece is being moved without writing out the entire name. Below are all of abbreviations:
Pawn – No abbreviation Rook – R
Knight – N Bishop – B
Queen – Q King – K
How to write Notation
Above is a chess board with coordinate pairs, as you can see each square has it’s own identifying coordinate pair. Writing chess notation is fairly simple. Here are some steps:
- first thing you write down when notating a move is the piece that is moving.
- Next, you write down the coordinate pair of the square that the piece is moving to.
For example, if I was to write Nf3, that would mean the Knight is moving to square F3. Similarly, if I wrote D4, that would mean the pawn on the D-file(the pawn in front of the Queen) is moving to square D4.
Other Rules of Notation:
Castling:
- If player castles kingside use the notation: o-o
- If player castles queenside use the notation: o-o-o
Capturing Pieces:
To show that one piece has captured another, simply put an “x” in between the piece that moved and the square it moved to. For example, Bxf4 indicates that a bishop has captured the piece on square F4.
Pawn Promotion:
To show a pawn has promoted write down the square it promoted on and then the piece it promoted to. For example, e8Q shows a pawn moved to square E8 and promoted to a queen.
Sherwood Chess 