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tl;dr

K = King

Q = Queen

B = Bishop

R = Rook

N = Knight

Pawns have no letter

.

You append a "+" to the end when it is a check move

You append a "#" to the end when it's a checkmate move

You add an "x" when your move eats another piece

.

Examples

- Moving a rook to g6: Rg6

- Moving a queen to d7 which eats a piece: Qxd7

- Moving a bishop to a3 which checks the opponents king: Ba3+

- Moving a pawn to e5: e5

- Moving a queen to h7 which eats a piece and checks the king: Qxh7+

- Moving a pawn to f4 which checkmates the king: f4#



There are few more.

Rae1 - rook a to e1. if two rooks on the first line can move to e1. R4d4 - if two rooks on the 4th line can go to d4. Ngxh2# - the knight from g captures on h2 with checkmate.

Nd2e4 - In a rare case that there are 3 knights that can go to a single square

Pawn captures are denoted as exd5 (pawn on the line e captures a pawn on d5) even if there is only one pawn that can make a capture.


I learned more from your concise post than I ever have from articles, Wikipedia, etc.


For Real. I finally understood chess notation.


Just adding promotion

- d8N# pawn moves and promotes to a knight resulting in checkmate (it can happen)


Thanks for this. What if two rooks can both get to e5, how do you disambiguate?


Using the column they are on, or the row if they are both on the same column. For example Rac8 moves a rook from a8 to c8, R1d2 moves it from d1 to d2.




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