A whole new way to look at chess notations

Chess notations have always been a mystery to beginners or even advanced chess players who haven't yet played chess in the tournaments. So, if you have watched movies or seen chess tournaments you must be wondering why players write on a piece of paper after making a move? Or if you played chess on chess.com you must be bothered by the codes like 'Ke3', or 'd1Nh6' popping up at the right side of your board. 

Well, this code is called chess notations. It's how we record our games to come back later and analyze those games, Nowadays, since it is handled automatically on online platforms like chess.com. But, arguably some of your best-played matches are still on a wooden board and you should be able to record it.

But, if you were never really able to follow through with chess notations. Sit back and relax my friend we are going to learn all about chess notations just keep reading.

What is Chess Notation?

Simply put, chess notations are the language we use to write chess games. And, just like any language, it has symbols we use to denote. It would have its own symbols and a structure to represent moves.

First, let me make one thing clear there are many chess notations. But, the one which is being used internationally is Algebraic Notation. There are other notations apart from this one which you might have seen in old movies or books. But, at present Algebraic notation is Internationally accepted as a means to write games. Let's start the journey. Those of you who are trying to run away just by hearing algebraic.. wait, it has nothing to do with algebra. This notation is very similar to writing a point in a graph except we need to track where that point goes and what piece that point represents.

We need to represent each move in some kind of command such that our king can order other pieces. but for that we need to know:

1. How to represent the board and each cell in it?

2. How to represent pieces?

3. How to represent moves? 

4. How do we structure our commands?

So, first, we look at the board, 

Empty Board: This is an empty board. How would we denote highlighted the move that white just played in below-board? Well, to start we would need to have a number for every cell right? Otherwise, how would we know which piece was at which square previously or where it moved?

Coordinated Board: Below is the same board with alphabets written for each column and numbers from 1 to 10 for each row as we move up. We can take these as our axes and we represent every point in our board concerning these. 

So, now we can say that our knight was at g1 and it moved to f3. So, by the above system of coordinates we can denote every cell as below:

How to represent pieces?

This is pretty easy we represent each peace as their first letter.

King-> K

Queen- > Q

Rook -> R

Bishop -> B

Knight -> N

Pawn -> No symbol is used.

So, from queen to bishop it's easy but why Knight is N? Well we already represented king with "K" so we can't use that, and anyway isn't K is silent in Knight so, just to take those things into the account we represent Knight with N.

But, why does Pawn doesn't have a symbol? Let's say that our King is very arrogant and he doesn't call his pawns he just yells and they do what he wants every other piece is a little more self-respected so he calls them by their name? but should it even surprise you, after all, he made the knight change his name?

Notations for Moves

How do we represent actions to perform?

Actions can be move, captures, short- Castling, long-Castling, checks, checkmates? I divide these actions into two parts to remember:

1. Actions king tells to his own piece: Moves, Captures,, short- castling, long- castling. Pawn Promotion

2. Message Piece gives to opposition king: checks, checkmates.

Lets, look at each action.

Moves:  Moves are the moves where a piece simply moves to another empty square. Here we don't have a task to do. So, don't represent moves by any symbol.

Capture: Here we need a symbol to denote that we are capturing a piece at some square. We use x to represent capture.

Short Castling: 0-0.

Long Castling: 0-0-0

Pawn Promotion:   We represent a pawn promotion by denoting the position at which a pawn reached to followed by an equal sign to represent that pawn is being promoted and later we represent the piece symbol to which the pawn is promoted to.

For Example, if a pawn moved to square a8 and promoted to rook it would be denoted as a8=R.

Check: We use "+" for representing a check.

Checkmate: We use  "#" to represent a  checkmate

How do we structure Commands: 

Well, we now have symbols for each piece, each cell in our board, and tasks we need to do. Now we need to structure the command by which the king can call each member specifically and tells them what to do and where to go.

In a simple situation its like, where the king only wants a piece to go to an empty square:

Piece Symbol -> Destination Square,
 example Ke5(Represents that king moves to e5)

So we can use the below formulae for generating our king commands:

 Piece Symbol-> What to do -> Destination Square->  Message to give the other side 

Example: Qxe5 ( x represent that you are telling your piece to capture the peace which is present at e5)

but, in some special situation it can become like:(when two similar pieces can go to the same square)

Piece Symbol-> Where- your-piece-is-present>  What to do -> Destination Square ->  Warning to Opposition

Example: In the below e we have three situations.

                                          

1. White's rook present at a1 wants to take position a3? How king would command him specifically when another rook can take the same position?

Ans: R1a3, here since knights are at same column(aka files), we need to differentiate the row number(aka Ranks). So, we represent the piece by his symbol + the  Rank he possesses.

2. Black's rook present at d8 wants to take square f8. 

Ans: Rdf8, when we get two similar pieces that can move to the same piece we represent the piece as the Piece symbol+ their existing column(aka Files), and then we need to represent where it wants to go.

3. Now let's suppose there is a black knight at e1(visualize it). Now White wants his Queen present at h4 to capture the Black's knight at e1. Remember there are three queens and all of em can go to the same square e1. How  would we write the command?

Ans: Qh4xe1, since we have cannot use either the row or column to identify the knight as there is a knight at the same row-level(4) and another on the same column(h) which can attach the e1. We need to give complete coordinates for Queen to represent it uniquely, so we represent the queen as Qh4. But, why did we use x, we have a condition that we are capturing a knight remember? and according to our square, we tell it what to do then where to go. 

Above were some of the puzzles I thought I threw at you to help you test your newly gained knowledge about chess notations. But, it would not be wise to consider this as an accurate measure of your knowledge. 

Now since you have understood the chess notations. Start recording your games. Play solo and record if you are not able to record in a live mode because it is distracting you. Trust me, this new mechanism you just learned on recording your moves is going to improve your game in long term significantly. And when you are finally able to record those games now you can set up the board multiple times playing the same game. You don't need to remember the whole board visually. Just start practicing and tell us how it helped you in your games. 

If you were not able to follow through a step just tell me in the comment section I would love to help you out.

This tutorial was my first attempt to make chess easy for beginners and make it better for the advanced. Please share your feedback in the comments sections and do let me know if in any step you had trouble following.