How to Notate
Chess notation may seem daunting. However, it’s an important skill that a chess player must learn when young. When playing chess, just like almost everything else, you cannot get better without learning from your mistakes. Notation allows you to review your game after it is over in order to analyze and understand what mistakes you made and how to improve for the future.
The game of chess consists of 6 pieces: the pawn, knight, bishop, rook, queen, and king.
How notation works is that you are essentially writing where a piece goes to for every move. Let’s look at an example. In the below chess board, you can see that along the bottom of the board, there are letters from “a” to “h” and along the side, there are numbers from 1 to 8.
Now let’s assume that there is a king on the chess board as seen below.
So how could you tell someone where this king is on the board? Well, this is what notation is for. The first thing you want to do is identity what piece you are talking about. In this case, it is a king. Then, you want to write what letter the piece starts with. “King” starts with the letter “k,” so you want to write down a capital “K.”
The next thing to do is look along the bottom to see what file the king is on. As seen below, the king is on the “d” file.
You have already written “K” to identify the piece which is the king. Unlike the first letter of the piece which should be capitalized, the letter for the file should remain lowercase. So, you should have written “Kd” so far. Lastly, you need to write which row the piece is on. Take a look at the numbers and see which row the king is on.
If you said 3, that would be correct. So write 3 after the “Kd.” Now, what you have is:
Kd3.
So what does this mean? This means that on the square d3, there is a king.
This is essentially the same for all pieces except for the knight and pawn. Since "king” starts with “k” as does “knight,” the next letter is used, so the letter “N” denotes knight. For the pawn, one might assume that you would use the letter “P” to denote the pawn, but in reality, you do not use a letter at all. So, if there was a pawn on the square g4, then you would write just “g4” to denote that there is a pawn on g4.
Try an example yourself. Take a look at the below image. Write the notation for it.
The answer is:
Ne5
In order to solve this, you need to identify which piece it is. The piece is a knight. If you remember from earlier, since “king” starts with “K,” for the knight, you have to use the letter “N.” Next, you need to identify which file it is on. If you look along the bottom, you can see that the knight is on the e file. Lastly, you need to see which row it is on. If you look along the right side, you can see the numbers, and the knight happens to be on the 5th rank.
So what is the final notation? Ne5.
Let’s try a real position now. In the below image, let’s say that the white queen is moving to the square with a circle in it. What would the notation be?
Before we solve what the notation for this is, here is one important fact: in notation, the square in which the piece was on is not relevant except for special cases which we will discuss later.
So, you need not worry about which square the queen is on; you need to pay attention to which square it is going. The queen is trying to go to the square with the green circle in it. Firstly, we know it is a queen, so “queen” starts with “Q” so we will write a capital “Q.” If you look along the bottom, it is on the d file, so write a lowercase “d” after the “Q.” If you look along the right side, you can see that it is on the 4th rank. So write the number “4” after the lowercase “d.” So, the final notation for the queen moving to that square is:
Qd4.
Now, let’s talk about capturing pieces. Let’s take a look at the below position. Let’s say that the king is taking the knight. How would you write that?
To start, you will need to find which piece you are using to capture the other piece.
Note: it does not matter what the other piece is.
The piece that you are using to capture the other piece is a king. So, you will need to write the letter that signifies the piece which would be “K” in this case. So, write a capital "K.”
Now, you will need to write the letter “x” to show that you are capturing a piece. Next, you need to write the file that the piece that you are capturing is on. In this case, the piece you are capturing is on the f file. So, write a lowercase “f” after the “x.” Lastly, write the row the piece you are capturing is on. The piece you are capturing is on the 4th rank, so write a 4 after the “f.” So, the way to say that the king is capturing the knight in this position is:
Kxf4
As stated earlier, it does not matter what piece you are capturing, so even if the piece we are capturing was a queen or a bishop, the notation would remain the same; Kxf4.
When capturing a piece with a pawn, it is slightly different. Everything will remain the same except for the part before the “x.” As said earlier, the pawn is the only piece which you does not have a letter to signify it.
So, when capturing with a pawn, you will use the file that the pawn is on instead of the letter that it starts with. Let’s take a look at a real example. In the below position, let us say that the white pawn is capturing the black knight. How would you write it?
The pawn is on the e file, so you will write a lowercase “e.” The rest is exactly like any other piece. Since you are capturing, you need to write the letter “x.” Next, write the file of the piece you are capturing, so in this case, it would be the f file, so write “f.” Lastly, write the row which the piece you are capturing is on, and in this case, it is the 6th rank, so write the number 6 after the “f.”
So, in this position, the notation for capturing the knight with the pawn is:
exf6.
Another important thing you need to know how to notate is castling. Castling is very simple. For a king side castle, simply write a zero followed by a hyphen followed by a zero. So, it would look like this: 0 - 0
For a queen side castle, add another hyphen and zero, so it would look like this:
0 - 0 - 0
In addition, when ever you check your opponent or your opponent checks you, after writing to which square your opponent moved, write a plus sign, so if your opponent moved his bishop to b5 and checked you, the notation would look like this:
Bb5+
Similarly, if your opponent checkmates you, add a hashtag after the move, so if your opponent captured your pawn on g2 in order to checkmate you, then you would write:
Qxg2#
Congratulations! Now you know how to notate. There are a few advanced notation topics which we will cover in a future lesson, but what you have learned in this lesson will help you notate during your games.
Now, to perfect the art of notation, you have to practice it in your games. In order to practice, click on the button below to download a PDF document which has the notation template created already. You can then print it out and write notation while playing your games.
Author: Saharsh Satheesh
