Algebraic Chess Notation Explained: Symbols, Moves and Examples

An example of how chess boards used to look in old books from the Middle Ages. The particular diagram above is from the French Manuscript (1173).

Chess Notation at a Glance

Chess Notation Symbols and Piece Abbreviations

Every move in algebraic notation is built from a small set of letters and symbols. Once you recognize them, any game score becomes readable. Here is the complete reference.

Piece Letters

The knight uses N because K is already taken by the king. Pawns never carry a letter — a move written as just a square is always a pawn move.

Action and Special Symbols

Annotation Symbols (Move Quality)

Annotation symbols are added by commentators after a move and never affect what was actually played — they only express an opinion about its quality.

Annotation Symbols in a Real Game: Fischer’s 17...Be6

Annotation symbols encode human judgment, not the move itself. A single ! marks a strong move, !! a brilliancy, ? a mistake and ?? a blunder, while !? flags an interesting try and ?! a dubious one. The best-known example is Donald Byrne vs. Bobby Fischer, New York 1956, the “Game of the Century”, whose scoresheet this article already shows. There, the 13-year-old Fischer played a queen sacrifice that annotators reward with !! across the surrounding sequence. Decode the score and you meet the special cases in context: captures with x, knight moves, and disambiguation all appear naturally. The same move can be written plainly and then judged. The letters record what was played; the symbols record how good it was.

What Is Chess Notation? The Coordinate Grid of Files, Ranks and Squares

In the algebraic system of move documentation, each square is assigned a letter and a number. These labels are called coordinates. Letters describe the horizontal coordinates of a square, while numbers are used for the vertical axis. To picture this more clearly, look at the example below:

The diagram above shows an empty board from white’s perspective with board coordinates on it. Ranks are numbered from bottom to top, starting with 1 and all the way up to 8, while files refer to the vertical columns, with each of them assigned a letter from left to right, from ‘a’ to ‘h’. To give a unique name to each square, a chess notation uses a pair of file and rank. Together, the files and ranks form an 8×8 grid. As an exercise, you may try to name the square of white’s queen by using the file-rank pair.

To describe where white’s queen is placed in the starting position, first we’d check the file she is placed on and then the rank. In this case, the queen is standing on the d1-square.

How to Read Chess Notation: A Game Score Line by Line

The most important thing a scoresheet records is the moves themselves. This information is written down in two columns, where the left column corresponds to white’s moves and the right one to black’s moves. Each row in an algebraic notation corresponds to the move number. For example, the very first row would consist of white’s first move (written down under white’s column) and then black’s first move (under black’s column). These two moves together, white’s and black’s, make up a full move, whereas each of them would be referred to as a half-move. To describe a certain move, either white’s or black’s, we first write down the initials of the piece, followed by the coordinates of the square that this piece has moved to. Coordinates are given in the form of file-rank pairs, as mentioned previously.

For example, in the diagram above, white’s first move would be recorded as 1.Nf3, where N stands for the Knight. (The initial letter ‘K’ is reserved for the King; therefore, the Knight is abbreviated as ‘N’) The only exception to the piece abbreviations is a pawn. Pawn moves are expressed by only using the file-rank pair.

The example above demonstrates white’s most popular starting move as well as black’s most common response to that: 1.e4 e5. In many old books, you may come across a text like e2-e4, where both the starting square and the destination square of a piece are included. In modern usage, the starting square is dropped, so we only write down the destination square. The complete list of piece abbreviations is as follows:

– K = King
– Q = Queen
– R = Rook
– B = Bishop
– N = Knight
– For pawn, we don’t use P, but only the destination square (e.g. e4, d5)

However, chess moves are not the only information the so-called chess scoresheet covers. A typical scoresheet has sections to be filled with players’ biographical information, such as name and surname, sometimes their country and their rating, and then the date of the game, information about the event (tournament name and round), and result.

The image above shows a unique scoresheet that was handwritten by the players during the Vishy Anand-Magnus Carlsen World Chess Championship Match in 2013 in Chennai, India. We can see the columns for white’s moves and black’s moves, along with the move number in each row. Once the game ends, the result is written in a space below the last moves. In this case, the ½ that we see in the move numbers 66-68 indicates that the game has ended in a draw. If the game was won by white, this would be expressed with ‘1-0’, whereas ‘0-1’ would be an indicator of black’s win. And most importantly, the scoresheet is signed by both players after the game. The true meaning of that is that they both agree that the indicated outcome of the game is correct. This way, signatures serve as official confirmation of the result.

How to Read Any Chess Move, Character by Character

Most moves you will ever see follow the same left-to-right pattern: piece, capture, destination, and an optional ending symbol. Read them in that order and the move decodes itself.

1. The first capital letter tells you the piece. No letter means a pawn.
2. An x means the move is a capture.
3. The file letter and rank number identify the destination square; promotion, check or mate symbols may follow.
4. A trailing + or # means the move gives check or checkmate.

Worked Example: dxe6

Reading dxe6 from left to right: there is no capital letter, so this is a pawn move; the leading d tells you which pawn — the one on the d-file; x means it captures; and e6 is where it lands. So dxe6 means “the pawn on the d-file captures on e6”. Pawn captures are the one case where the move starts with a file letter instead of a piece letter.

Worked Example: Qxh7#

Q is the queen, x is a capture, h7 is the target square, and # means the capture also delivers checkmate. Put together: “the queen captures on h7, checkmate”.

When two identical pieces could reach the same square, an extra letter or number is added to show which one moved — for example Nbd2 means the knight on the b-file goes to d2, not the other knight.

How to Write Chess Board Notation: Recording Each Move

When writing down the moves on a scoresheet, we only write white’s moves under white’s column and black’s moves under black’s column, no matter with which pieces we are playing with. The players’ names are in the order of white first, followed by the player’s name with black pieces. This way, the sides will be clear. There is no explicit distinction between ‘my’ and ‘my opponent’s’ moves; rather, the names are assigned to the sides (white and black) to clarify between which players the game occurred. Let’s take a look at the nitty-gritty of writing down each move and the meanings of several symbols.

Normal Moves

To document a usual move, it is enough to write the initials of the piece (except for pawns) and the coordinates of the destination square that the piece has moved to. For example, ‘Bc4’ would mean the bishop has moved to the c4 square, or, in other words, after this move, in the resulting position, the bishop is standing on the c4 square. There is one tricky case to watch for, though:

Let’s imagine that you are playing the position above with the black pieces, and you would like to develop the knight from the b8 to the d7 square. However, if you have played this move and then recorded it as …Nd7, it could lead to confusion when reading it. The knight on f6 could also move to d7, so for someone who is reading the game notation for the first time and does not know about the game, it would be unclear to which knight’s move …Nd7 refers to. To distinguish cases when two pieces of the same type can move to the same square, we add either the starting file or rank information right after the piece’s initial. E.g., in this case, it would be …Nbd7, because the knight moves from the b8 square.

In this position, black’s rook on 2nd rank is attacking both of white’s pawns (a2 and e2) and white would like to defend them in some way. One way would be to defend the rank by moving one of the rooks to the 2nd rank. Both of white’s rooks are on the same file (b) and could move to b2. If white moves the rook from b7 to b2, we would document it as R7b2, where ‘7’ indicates the starting rank of the rook.

Check

Checks are indicated with a plus sign (“+”) at the end of the move.

White could give a check here with 1.Rh4+ and 1…Kg5 would be black’s only legal response. If white then plays 2.Rf5#, the move is not just check but checkmate; therefore, we would use ‘#’ instead of ‘+’.

Capture

In the case of captures, an “x” sign is put between the piece initial and the piece destination. E.g. Qxd4 (Queen captured a piece on the d4 square) or exd4 (e-pawn captured the piece on d4).

Castling

Castling is a special move performed by the king and rook in chess that combines moving two pieces in one go. Kingside castling (also known as short-castle) is shown with ‘0-0’, whereas queenside castling or long-castle is referred to as ‘0-0-0’.

En Passant

En Passants are expressed just like any other pawn captures, e.g., dxe6. The suffix ‘dxe6 e.p.’ is optional and not so commonly used.

Pawn Promotion

When a pawn reaches the opposite end of the board, it is promoted to a queen, rook, bishop, or knight, according to the player’s choice. This action is known as pawn promotion. The notation for pawn promotion is straightforward. First, write the move that the pawn makes, followed by an equals sign (“=”) and the initial of the piece the pawn is promoted to. For example, if a pawn moves to the eighth rank and is promoted to a queen, it would be notated as ‘e8=Q‘. This notation indicates that the pawn on the e-file has moved to the eighth rank and has been promoted to a queen.

Special Cases: Castling, Captures, En Passant and Promotion

Most moves are simply a piece letter plus a destination, but a handful of situations need extra notation. Captures insert an x between the piece and the square, so Bxe5 means a bishop takes on e5. A pawn capture leads with its file, as in exd5. Castling has its own glyphs: O-O for kingside (short) and O-O-O for queenside (long). En passant is written like any pawn capture, for example exd6, with the optional suffix e.p. when it adds clarity. Pawn promotion adds an equals sign and the new piece, so e8=Q promotes to a queen and e8=Q+ does so with check. Disambiguation handles two identical pieces reaching one square. You add the starting file or rank, giving Nbd7 or R1e2. These notations cover almost every move you will ever write down.

Chess Notation Examples from Real Scoresheets

Above can be seen two different scoresheets of the same match, handwritten by the players (P. Svidler and V. Anand).

Scoresheet of the game between D. Byrne and the former World Champion Fischer

Before algebraic notation became the standard in the 1980s, many scoresheets looked like the image above, using a descriptive notation with letters. This type of documentation of moves can be seen in most of the old books.

Recording Whole Games: PGN and FEN

Single moves are useful, but chess software needs to store entire games and exact positions. Two text formats handle this, and both are built on the algebraic notation you have just learned.

PGN: Portable Game Notation

PGN stores a complete game as a list of moves with tags for the players, event and result. Because it is plain text, the same file opens in almost every chess program and website. A PGN file is simply the move list you would write by hand, wrapped in a standard structure.

FEN: Forsyth-Edwards Notation

FEN describes a single position rather than a whole game. One line of text records where every piece stands, whose turn it is, castling rights and a few other details — enough to set up the exact position in any engine or board editor.

You rarely write either format by hand; you mostly copy and paste them. But knowing what they are means you will never be confused when a site offers to “import PGN” or “load FEN”.

Recording the Result: 1-0, 0-1 and ½-½

A game score is not complete until the outcome is recorded at the end of the move list. A win for White is written 1-0, a win for Black is 0-1, and a draw is shown as ½-½ (sometimes written 1/2-1/2). These figures appear below the final move on a scoresheet, and in a PGN file they close the move list as the last token. When a player resigns, or the two agree a draw rather than reaching checkmate or stalemate, the notation does not change. Only the result code reflects what happened. On an official scoresheet both players sign beneath the result, confirming they agree the recorded outcome is correct, and that signature is what gives the score its standing in any dispute or appeal.

Why Documenting Your Chess Moves Matters

– For any serious tournament, it is obligatory to keep a record of the moves during the game. This practice formalizes the outcome, which is mutually confirmed by players through their signatures after the game. A signed scoresheet is your evidence if you ever need to file an appeal.

– Apart from the mandatory procedure of tournament regulations, the biggest benefit of documenting moves is that you can replay your played games and learn from your mistakes.

– Documenting moves makes it possible to share the games and knowledge. All the chess books rely on such documentation.

Algebraic vs Descriptive Notation: How the Old System Worked

Before algebraic notation became the standard, English-language books used descriptive notation, where squares were named from each player’s own point of view. You will still meet it in older chess books, so it helps to recognize the difference.

The key difference: algebraic notation gives every square one fixed name (a1 to h8) regardless of who is moving, while descriptive notation counts squares from each side separately. Algebraic is shorter, unambiguous and now used worldwide, which is why every modern guide — including this one — teaches it first.

Other Notation Systems You May Encounter

Standard algebraic notation is the worldwide default, but a few related systems still show up. Long algebraic, or coordinate, notation spells out both squares, writing e2-e4 instead of e4, and you’ll see it in older books and some engine output. Figurine algebraic notation swaps the piece letters for small symbols, so a knight shows a ♘ rather than an N. That makes game scores readable across languages, which is why international magazines use it. ICCF numeric notation, used in correspondence chess, replaces letters with numbers entirely and records a move as a four-digit string like 5254 for e2-e4. The older descriptive notation names squares from each player’s own side, so e4 becomes P-K4. Recognize these variants and no game score will read as gibberish, whatever its source.

Why Every Player Should Learn This

Chess moves are the words of the game’s own language. Learning notation is like learning to read and write: it is one of the first real steps into serious chess. Fortunately, it is a relatively straightforward skill to acquire, offering immense benefits for those looking to enhance their game or engage with chess more professionally.

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