Part I · First steps Chapter 7 of 40
Writing the game down
A game from 1910 is still replayed move by move, though all that is left of it is a line of letters and numbers. We will fill in the scoresheet of that game ourselves and learn to read and write any record: on paper, in a book and in PGN.
What to know first: 1 · The board and the pieces
What you will learn
- write and read any move, including castling, promotion and two identical pieces that can reach the same square
- read a game in PGN, in a foreign-language book or in an older notation, and load it onto the analysis board
- understand the commentator's signs: !, ?, !!, ??, !? and ?!
Vienna, 1910. Richard Réti has White against Savielly Tartakower and on move nine he gives up his queen. One move later the black king can no longer be saved. The board and the pieces of that game are long gone, yet it has been studied for more than a hundred years, because one line of letters and numbers is all that is left of it.
1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nf6 5. Qd3 e5 6. dxe5 Qa5+ 7. Bd2 Qxe5 8. O-O-O Nxe4 9. Qd8+ Kxd8 10. Bg5+ Kc7 11. Bd8#
You can already read a good deal of that line. The piece letters, the capture sign x, check + and mate # came in the first chapter, and so did the move number and the three dots before a Black move (the fool's mate decoded). But why does the capture dxe4 start with a letter that is not a piece? What is O-O-O? How do you write a move when two knights can reach the same square? And how does a computer read the line?
We will answer all of this by filling in the scoresheet of that very game, move by move. Whatever the game lacked, we add at the end. There are no rules here for how the pieces move: each piece has its own chapter, and the links are given as we go. We care about one thing only: how a move turns into a record and back.
The scoresheet
At a tournament a scoresheet lies beside the board: a sheet with numbered lines. Each line has two columns, a move by White and a move by Black. Under the Laws of Chess of FIDE, the international chess federation, each player writes down both their own moves and their opponent's, move after move and legibly. Writing a move down in advance and playing it afterwards is not allowed: the move goes on the board first, then on the sheet. When the game is over, both players sign the sheets with the result.
In rapid chess and blitz, writing the moves down is not required. In an ordinary game, too, a player with less than five minutes left on the clock, and no extra 30 seconds per move, may stop writing until the end of that period. The rest of the time the scoresheet is part of the game. An arbiter uses it to restore the position if the pieces get knocked over, and a player uses it to prove that a position has occurred three times (that kind of draw is covered in chapter 6).
The way the moves are written is called notation. Ours is algebraic: a piece is a letter, a square is a pair of coordinates, as in Battleships. Here are the first four moves of the Réti game on a scoresheet.
| No. | White | Black |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | e4 | c6 |
| 2 | d4 | d5 |
| 3 | Nc3 | dxe4 |
| 4 | Nxe4 | Nf6 |
In a book the same moves run along one line: 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nf6. A number with a full stop opens a pair of moves, White's and Black's. A Black move that comes without White's move before it gets the number and three dots: 3… dxe4. That is how a record is written when the analysis starts with a Black move, or when a comment has broken the line.
A commentator has written a whole paragraph about White's move 5. Qd3 and now carries on with the record. How do you write Black's reply?
A Black move that stands on its own is written with the number and three dots: 5… e5. The number says which line of the sheet it belongs to, and the dots say it is Black's move.
There are no labels along the edges of the board, and you have to write a move quickly while your opponent is thinking. So the name of a square must come to you at a glance. In the first chapter the trainer gave you hints with letters and numbers. Here there are none: this is the third level of the same trainer.
The first moves: square, letter, capture
A move record answers two questions: which piece moved, and where to. Where it came from is usually not written, because on the board you can see which piece is able to reach that square. The letter in front names the piece, and a pawn has no letter. A capture is marked with x before the square. Under FIDE's Laws that sign may be left out, but books and this course always include it.
A pawn capture has a rule of its own: in front you write the letter of the file the pawn left. dxe4 means that the pawn from the d-file captured on e4. Without that letter the record would not work: e4 already means an ordinary pawn move to e4, and two different pawns, one from d5 and one from f5, could capture on e4. Page through the start of the game and watch how each move lands in the record under the board.
1. e4. There is no letter, so a pawn moved, and a pawn that does not capture goes straight along its own file, so where it came from is clear anyway.c6. This move belongs in the same first line of the sheet, in the second column.2. d4 d5. The pawn on d5 attacks the pawn on e4.3. Nc3. The knight's letter and the square, nothing more.3… dxe4. The letter d says which file the pawn came from, and x says it is a capture.4. Nxe4. Here there is no need for a file letter: only this knight can reach e4.4… Nf6. Four lines of the sheet are filled in.How is this move by White written?
fxe5: the file the pawn left, x, the square of the capture. Here the letter f also tells this move apart from dxe5.
Check and castling
The next four moves add two signs. You know check, +: it goes straight after a move that attacks the king. The reply to a check gets no special sign. If you block the check with a piece, the record is ordinary: which piece, and where to.
The second sign is new. Castling is the only move in which two pieces move: the king goes two squares towards a rook, and the rook jumps over it and lands next to it. When you may castle and when you may not is the subject of chapter 6. Here we need only the record, and it looks like no other.
4… Nf6. We start the fifth line of the sheet.5. Qd3.5… e5.6. dxe5. Once again the file letter comes before x.6… Qa5+.7. Bd2. Answering a check is an ordinary move, and it is written like one.7… Qxe5.8. O-O-O.Castling is written with the letter O. If the king goes towards the rook on h1 (h8 for Black), that is short castling, or kingside castling, O-O: the king lands on g1 and the rook on f1. If the king goes towards the rook on a1 (a8), that is long castling, or queenside castling, O-O-O: the king lands on c1 and the rook on d1. A count helps you remember: the number of Os is the number of squares the rook travels. From h1 to f1 is two squares, from a1 to d1 three.
FIDE's Laws and many printed books use zeros instead of the letter, 0-0 and 0-0-0. Computer files, chess websites and engines use the capital letter O: O-O and O-O-O, and so does this course. On the boards of this course you castle with the king: move it two squares towards the rook and the rook jumps over by itself.
How is this move by Black written?
The king went towards the rook on h8 and the rook travelled two squares: short castling, O-O. For Black it is written just as for White, because the sheet already shows whose move it is.
Sometimes castling does more than tuck the king away. The rook that has jumped over the king can land on the same line as the enemy king. Then the sign for check or mate goes after the Os.
White to move. Play O-O: move the king from e1 to g1, and the rook on h1 will go to f1 by itself. This move is checkmate.
O-O#: the rook on f1 checks the king on f3 along the f-file. The king on g1 holds g2, the knight on c3 holds e2 and e4, the pawn on d2 holds e3, the pawns on h2 and h3 hold g3 and g4, and along the f-file the king cannot get away from the rook. Compare Rf1+: the rook would land on the same square, but the king would stay on e1, and the black king would escape to g2. The record O-O speaks of two pieces at once, and here that decides the game.
The commentator's signs
Back to Vienna. After 8. O-O-O the white knight on e4 looks like easy prey, and Tartakower takes it: 8… Nxe4. That move deserves two question marks. Let us ask the engine why.
8… Nxe4 and won a knight. Look at the d-file: White has the rook on d1, the bishop on d2 and the queen on d3 on it, and at its far end, next to the black king, lies the empty square d8.The signs after a move are a verdict from the commentator, the person who annotates the game afterwards. They are not written on a tournament scoresheet, which is for moves only. You met four of the signs in the first chapter, and two more turn up in every book of annotated games.
| Sign | Meaning |
|---|---|
| !! | a brilliant move |
| ! | a good move |
| !? | an interesting, risky move |
| ?! | a dubious move |
| ? | a mistake |
| ?? | a blunder |
The order of the two marks helps you tell !? from ?!: the first one is the main impression. !? is "interesting" first and a doubt second: the move is sharp, and it is not clear whether it is good. ?! is "bad" first, but not for certain: the move is dubious, though not easy to refute. The engine of this course uses the same signs: an inaccuracy gets ?!, a mistake ?, a blunder ??, and the best move !. That is why an exclamation mark appears on the board when you solve a puzzle correctly.
A commentator has put ?! after a move. What did they mean?
In ?! the question comes first: the impression is rather bad. The exclamation mark after it softens the verdict: the move is hard to refute, and perhaps it is not so bad after all.
You can read what happened next for yourself: play out the end of the game from the record.
White to move. Play out the end of the game from the record: 9. Qd8+ Kxd8 10. Bg5+ Kc7 11. Bd8#. The board will make Black's replies itself.
The queen is given up, but the d-file has opened for the rook, and the bishop came from g5 to d8 with mate. Had Black retreated with the king to e8 on move ten, the rook would have given mate: 11. Rd8#.
On move nine the white queen went to d8 with check, right next to the king, and Black had one answer: to take it. The move 10. Bg5+ checks with two pieces at once: the bishop on g5 and the rook on d1, whose file the bishop uncovered. That is called a double check: you cannot block two checks at once or capture both pieces, and only a king move helps. The queen sacrifice deserves !!: after 9. Qd8+ mate cannot be avoided.
The record has a history of its own. The Vienna newspaper Neues Wiener Tagblatt of 1 April 1910 printed the game ending with 10. Bg5+, and Black resigned: mate on the next move was already unavoidable. The move 11. Bd8# appeared in later publications, Tartakower's own among them, and that is the form in which the game is known today. Whether the mate was played on the board or added afterwards cannot now be known: the earliest record ends with a resignation. It makes no difference to the result.
One last detail of the record is the result. 1-0 means that White won, 0-1 that Black won, and ½-½ a draw. A resignation usually gets no sign of its own: the record ends with the last move played, and the result stands after it. For our game it is 1-0, however it ended: with Tartakower's resignation or with mate.
What the game did not have
Three things did not turn up in the Vienna game, and they turn up in other games all the time.
Two pieces, one square
The record Nd2 will not do if both knights can go to d2. Then, after the piece letter, you add whatever tells them apart. First try the file the piece left: Nbd2 is the knight from the b-file. If both pieces stand on the same file, you write the rank: R1a3 is the rook from the first rank. You add exactly as much as is needed for the move to be read in only one way.
How do you write this move as briefly as possible, but so that it cannot be read in two ways?
The knights stand on different files, b and f, so the file letter is enough: Nbd2. The rank number would be needed only if both knights stood on the same file.
Now read a record like that and play it. Here the result hangs on a single letter: one knight gives mate, the other only check.
White to move. Both knights can go to f7. Play the move Nef7#.
Nef7#: the knight from the e-file went to f7. It checks the king on h8, the knight on h6 holds g8, and the king has nowhere to run: g7 and h7 are occupied by its own pawns. The move Nhf7+ is check too, but then nobody holds g8, and the king goes there.
Promotion and en passant
A pawn that reaches the last rank turns into a queen, a rook, a bishop or a knight (in detail in chapter 4). In the record, the letter of the new piece goes after the square: e8=Q means that the pawn arrived on e8 and became a queen. FIDE's Laws write the letter straight after the square, without an equals sign (e8Q); this course and computer files include it. Both forms are understood.
The pawn has one more special capture, en passant: it takes an enemy pawn that has just passed it by moving two squares. The rule is explained in the same chapter 4. In the record it looks like an ordinary pawn capture: you give the square where the capturing pawn landed, even though the captured pawn stood beside it. FIDE's Laws allow you to add e.p. (from the French en passant, "in passing"): exd6 e.p.. Computer files and this course do without those letters. Here are all the special moves in one short line.
1… d5.2. exd6, and under FIDE's Laws you may also write 2. exd6 e.p..2… Kd7 3. O-O.4. b8=Q+. The letter of the new piece comes first, then the check sign.What does the record exf8=N+ mean?
Read it in order: e is a pawn from the e-file, x is a capture, f8 is the square, =N means it became a knight, and + is check. Pawns do not promote only to queens: sometimes a knight gives check at once where a queen would not.
One game, several notations
The standard letters are English: K, Q, R, B, N, and a pawn has none. That is what you will find in almost every book and magazine in English, and in chess programs, databases and websites everywhere. Other languages have their own letters. In Russian the queen is Ф, in German D (from Dame). The coordinates of the squares are the same all over the world. Chess books and magazines for readers of every language do without letters: they print little figurines instead. The Belgrade Chess Informant does this, for example.
| Piece | English | Russian | Figurine |
|---|---|---|---|
| King | K | Кр | ♔ |
| Queen | Q | Ф | ♕ |
| Rook | R | Л | ♖ |
| Bishop | B | С | ♗ |
| Knight | N | К | ♘ |
| Pawn | — | — | — |
Foreign letters set one trap for an English reader. Take the knight's move to f3. In English it is Nf3: the knight got the letter N because the king already has K. German writes it Sf3 (the knight is the Springer). In a Russian book the knight is К, a Cyrillic letter that looks exactly like the Latin K, and the king is Кр. So the Russian Кf3 is the English Nf3, while the English Kf3 is a king move.
In a game record written in Latin letters you find the move Kf3. Which piece went to f3?
K is for king. A knight's move to f3 is written Nf3; only a Russian book would use К for it.
There are other notations too. Long algebraic notation gives both squares, the one the piece left and the one it went to: e2–e4, Ng1–f3. It is longer but can be read without a board. Old books use it, and some players still keep their scoresheet this way. Chess programs pass moves to each other in a similar form, called UCI, but without piece letters or a hyphen: e2e4, g1f3.
Older English and American books use a quite different system, descriptive notation: a square is named after the piece that stands on its file at the start of the game. 1. P-K4 is a pawn to the fourth square of the king's file, which is 1. e4. Each side counts the ranks from its own side, so Black's reply 1… P-K4 is 1… e5. English, Spanish and French chess literature used it until about 1980, by which time algebraic notation had almost displaced it. FIDE's current Laws recognise only algebraic notation in competitions: a scoresheet in any other notation is no use as evidence in a dispute. If you pick up an old book written this way, you will have to translate the moves slowly at first.
PGN: a scoresheet for the computer
So that any program can read a game, it is stored in the PGN format (Portable Game Notation). The standard was prepared by readers of the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.chess, led by Steven Edwards, and its final edition is dated 12 March 1994. Since then almost every chess program has read and written PGN. Here is our game in PGN.
[Event "?"]
[Site "Vienna AUT"]
[Date "1910.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Reti, Richard"]
[Black "Tartakower, Savielly"]
[Result "1-0"]
1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4
4. Nxe4 Nf6 5. Qd3 e5 6. dxe5 Qa5+
7. Bd2 Qxe5 8. O-O-O Nxe4??
9. Qd8+!! Kxd8 10. Bg5+
{Double check.} Kc7
(10... Ke8 11. Rd8#)
11. Bd8# 1-0At the top are the tags, one per line: event, site, date, round, White, Black, result. These seven are mandatory and always come in this order. Whatever is unknown is replaced with a question mark: we do not know the name of the event or the round, and for the date we know only the year, so the month and the day are ??. Below come the moves, always in English letters, whatever language the program speaks, with castling written with the letter O. Evaluation signs go straight after the move, as in a book. Curly braces hold a comment, and round brackets hold a variation that did not happen in the game: here it is the retreat of the king to e8. The result stands last, the same as in the tag.
PGN writes results in figures: 1-0, 0-1, and for a draw 1/2-1/2, without the ½ sign. An asterisk * means that the game is unfinished or the result is unknown.
The PGN of a game ends with 0-1. How did the game end?
The score is written as on a scoreboard: White's points first, then Black's. White has 0 and Black has 1, so Black won (by mate, by the opponent's resignation or on time).
You can copy this text and paste it into the "Game (PGN)" field on the analysis page. Press "Load game" and the game appears on the board: you can page through it, ask the engine about any move and try your own moves in place of the ones played. It works the other way round too: the "Copy PGN" button gives you the record of whatever is on the board.
The last exercise is to read an English-language game record. Here is the start of another game in PGN: 1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Nc6 3. Qh5 Nf6. It is one of the most common traps at the start of a game, and chapter 10 tells the story.
White to move. The next move in the PGN is written 4. Qxf7#. Play it.
4. Qxf7#: the queen goes from h5 to f7, takes the pawn and gives mate. The bishop on c4 protects the queen along the diagonal c4–d5–e6–f7, so the king cannot take it.
What's next
Now you can read any game: in English letters or in a foreign-language book, on a scoresheet, in print and in PGN. But reading a move is not yet judging it. Tartakower won a knight and Réti gave up a queen, and still Réti won the game. How much each piece is worth, when a trade pays and when it hides a mate is explained by chapter 8, "Piece values and trades". In the meantime, play the bot and watch the record of your game grow under the board: now you can read it. Chapter 39 will teach you to go over your own games with an engine.