Chessville
...by Chessplayers, for Chessplayers!

Today is

Site Map

If you have disabled Java for your browser, use the Site Map (linked in the header and footer).

Chessville
logo by
ChessPrints

Advertise
with
Chessville!!

Advertise to
thousands
of chess
fans for
as little
as $25.

Single insert:
$35
x4 insert:
@ $25 each.

From the
Chessville
Chess Store

Rules

Notation Basics

There are a variety of ways to notate the moves during a chess game. For our purposes, we will stick to the most common one, which is sometimes referred to as “simple algebraic notation.” Observe the following example board and its coordinates. The files are labeled “a” through “h” from left to right from White’s perspective; the ranks are labeled “1” through “8” from bottom to top from White’s perspective.

a b c d e f g h

Pieces are identified by the following letters: K = king, Q = queen, B = bishop, N = knight (not K, which would be ambiguous with the K for king), R = rook, and no letter is used for the pawn. Moves are indicated by including a letter which represents the piece being moved, followed by the alpha-numeric coordinate of the square to which the piece is being moved. If two pieces of the same type could potentially move to the same square, then an additional letter or number is used to identify which of the two pieces is actually being moved.

Next: Example Game