Junior Club: Recording the moves

Recording the moves is a big step up from casual player to competitive player.  This week some of the kids learnt how to record the moves.

The squares on a chess board each have a unique coordinate.  The columns start with a and go to h which we also call files and the rows from 1 to 8 also called ranks.  See below board.

This allows us to talk about squares on the chess board quite easily.  If you have ever player battle ships you will easily get the idea.  First call the file and then the rank.  So the square at the bottom left is called a1.

For chess notation we abbreviate each of the chess pieces as follows:-
King         K
Queen      Q
Rook        R
Bishop      B
Knight      N
Pawn        Space when moving and the file it was on when capturing.

There are also some special notations we need to know
Castle king's     0-0
Castle queen's  0-0-0
Capture            X
Check              +
Mate                #

When we make a move we name the piece (The abbreviation from the list above) and the square it is moving to.

If two pieces can move to the same square usually knights or rooks we name the piece the rank or file it was on and the square it is moving to.

 If for example we want to move the knight on b7 to d6 we would write down 1.N7d6

Here is an example game.
1.e4 the king's pawn moves forward two squares, c5 Black's queen's bishop pawn moves forward 2.
2.Nf3 d6

 3.d4 cxd4 Black captures the White pawn on d4 with his pawn that was on the c-file.
4.Nxd4 Nc6

5.Bb5 Bd7, 6.0-0 White castles king-side 6...e6

7.Be3 Qf6, 8.Nc3 0-0-0 Black castles queen-side, 9.Qd2 Nge7 Black's other knight could also have moved to e7 so it is important to note which knight was moving.

Recording the moves is easy, but takes a little practice to get used to.