Chess notation: how to write down moves in chess

Notation is the common language of chess players. The line 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 means the same in London, Buenos Aires and Mumbai: it is the Ruy Lopez, and any chess player will set it up on a board in half a minute.

• Reviewing your games. Without a record only impressions remain after the game; with one you can see where the mistake was.
• Study. Books, opening references, puzzles and studies are written in notation.
• Tournaments. In classical games recording moves is compulsory, and the arbiter uses the record to settle disputes: threefold repetition, the 50-move rule, time forfeits.
• Playing at a distance or blindfold. Correspondence or blindfold games are impossible without notation.

The board is an 8 by 8 grid. Files (columns) are labelled with letters a to hfrom left to right, as seen from White's side. Ranks (rows) are numbered 1 to 8from bottom to top: White's pieces start on ranks one and two, Black's on seven and eight.

A square is named by a letter and a number: e4 is where the e-file meets the fourth rank. The corner square a1 on White's left is dark, and the right-hand corner for each player is a light square - h1 (and a8for Black) - which is how you set the board up correctly. The queen starts on her own colour: White's on d1, Black's on d8.

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More about the board and the starting position - chess board setup.

Every piece except the pawn is written with a capital letter. In English notation the letters are English, and it is the international standard. A pawn move is written with the square only: e4, d5.

Note: the knight is written N, because K is already taken by the king. Russian notation solves the same problem the other way round: the king gets two letters, Кр, so it is not confused with the knight К.

Other languages have their own letters - worth knowing if you read foreign books:

To be independent of language, books and programs print figurine notation: a piece symbol instead of a letter, ♘f3 instead of Nf3. It reads the same in every country. How each piece moves - how chess pieces move.

The world's main notation is algebraic. FIDE recognises only this one in its competitions (Appendix C to the Laws of Chess). It has two forms.

Long notationis clearer: you can see where the piece came from. Children's coaches and old books like it. Short notation is the standard of modern books, programs and tournament scoresheets.

A capture is marked with x (some traditions use a colon :). A capturing pawn is named by its file: exd5 - the pawn from the e-file captured on d5. Very old records also use the shortest form, ed.

Move numbers

One "move" in notation is a pair: White's move and Black's reply. The number goes before White's move: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5. If a record starts with Black's move, an ellipsis follows the number: 3... Nf6.

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The FIDE Laws write castling with zeros; the letter O (O-O) is common in English-language books and software and means the same. The conditions for castling - castling in chess.

An example of a whole game - Scholar's Mate in four moves, in short notation:

1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Nc6 3. Qh5 Nf6 4. Qxf7# 1-0

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How not to fall for this mate - Scholar's Mate. When a game ends in a draw - draws in chess.

If either of two identical pieces can go to the same square, the short record is not enough - it is unclear which one moved. Then the piece's file is added after its letter, and if they share a file - its rank.

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Long notation never has this ambiguity: the starting square is already given - Nb1-d2.

In game commentary, evaluation symbols are placed next to moves. Books, magazines and analysis software use them.

The positional evaluation symbols come from Chess Informant - a series that printed games without words, with symbols only, and could therefore be read in any country.

Descriptive (English) notation

Before switching to algebraic, English-speaking countries used descriptive notation: a square was named after the piece that starts on its file, and ranks were counted from your own side. The move e4 there is P-K4 ("pawn to king four"), Nf3 is N-KB3, and for Black the same square has a different name, because Black counts from their own side. It is worth knowing to read older English and American books.

Numeric notation for correspondence chess

In correspondence chess, where opponents come from different countries and write in different alphabets, ICCF numeric notation is used: both files and ranks are digits from 1 to 8. A move is four digits: the from-square and the to-square. e2-e4 is written as 5254, Ng1-f3 as 7163. For a promotion a fifth digit gives the piece: 1 queen, 2 rook, 3 bishop, 4 knight.

Long algebraic for software

Chess engines talk over the UCI protocol, where a move is simply two squares in a row: e2e4, g1f3, and a promotion is e7e8q. The piece is not given at all.

PGN (Portable Game Notation) is a text file with a whole game. First come tags in square brackets - event, site, date, round, players, result - and then the moves in short English notation:

[Event "Club tournament"]
[Site "London"]
[Date "2026.10.23"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Harris, Peter"]
[Black "Wood, Anna"]
[Result "1-0"]

1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Nc6 3. Qh5 Nf6 4. Qxf7# 1-0

Every chess program and website opens PGN: you can load the file into any of them and step through the game move by move.

FEN records not a game but a single position - in one line: the placement by rank from top to bottom, whose move it is, castling rights, the en passant square and the move counters. The starting position looks like this:

rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1

To set up a position and get its FEN - the chess board editor.

• Classical time control - recording is compulsory.Under the FIDE Laws each player writes down their own and the opponent's moves, move by move, on a scoresheet. You may not write a move before it is made.
• Time trouble. If a player has less than five minutes and there is no increment of 30 seconds per move, they need not keep recording to the end of the game.
• Rapid and blitz. Moves are not recorded - the game is too fast.

How a scoresheet is laid out, who signs it and what happens to it after the game - chess notation and scoresheets.

• Mixing up the knight and the king. In English notation the king is K and the knight is N.
• Inconsistent castling. Use either zeros or the letter O throughout: 0-0 and 0-0-0, or O-O and O-O-O.
• Forgetting to specify the piece. If two knights could go to d2, "Nd2" does not say which - you need Nbd2.
• Losing track of the move number. A skipped move shifts the whole record, and the game is hard to reconstruct later. Check with your opponent after each move.
• Writing the move in advance. At a tournament that is a violation: the record comes after the move.
• Not marking a promotion. "e8" without a letter is unclear: what did the pawn become?

Nobody writes every move with a pen during blitz or a casual evening game in a café - but without a record the game cannot be reviewed later. In the Vibe Chess app the phone camera does this work: put the phone on a stand so it sees the board, and the app records every move in chess notation by itself.

• Any board and pieces - no electronic board needed.
• Castling, en passant and promotion are recorded like ordinary moves.
• Mate and stalemate are noticed by the app - recording stops.
• An illegal move is noticed too and is not written into the game.

How to set up the phone and start recording - recording a chess game with a phone camera.

A recorded game is saved in the app with all its moves: you can step through it move by move, and the Game analysis button hands the record to an engine. It calculates each player's accuracy and marks moves with the same evaluation symbols as books do - inaccuracies, mistakes and blunders - and shows the best move in each position.

More about analysis - chess game analysis in the app.

Since the moves record themselves, they can be shown to viewers straight away. A game recorded by the camera appears on live.playvibechess.com: the board, the players and the latest moves in notation - the same second they are made at the board. Whole tournaments are broadcast this way, every table at once.

How to set this up at your tournament - a live chess tournament broadcast.

• Play on a labelled board. Many boards have letters and numbers printed along the edges - in a week the squares stick by themselves.
• Replay games from books. Five to ten games set up from the record - and notation reads without a hitch.
• Record your own games. At least the slow ones, at least the first twenty moves.
• Try playing blindfold.Without a board in front of you, notation becomes the game's only language - blindfold chess.
• Practise in the editor. Set up a position from a record and check yourself - the chess board editor.