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Here's the starting chess board before any moves have been made:
| ♜ | ♞ | ♝ | ♛ | ♚ | ♝ | ♞ | ♜ |
| ♟ | ♟ | ♟ | ♟ | ♟ | ♟ | ♟ | ♟ |
| ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ |
| ♖ | ♘ | ♗ | ♕ | ♔ | ♗ | ♘ | ♖ |
There are many kinds of chess notation, and there is a good discussion of them on Wikipedia here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#Notation
For this game, I suggest an informal version of what's called "natural language" as described here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_notation
In other words, we just type a description of what we're doing according to the coordinates listed in this table.
- English_Descriptive_Chess_Notation.png (163.74 KiB) Viewed 3350 times
You'll note that each square has a different notation depending on whether it is being specified by the player playing white or the player playing black.
Here's a move by the player playing white moving the white's King 2 to King 4:
- English_Descriptive_Chess_Notation_K2_to_K4.png (167.22 KiB) Viewed 3350 times
Here's a move by the player playing black moving the black's Queen Bishop 2 to Queen Bishop 4:
- English_Descriptive_Chess_Notation_QB2_to_QB4.png (171.23 KiB) Viewed 3350 times
Here's a description from Wikipedia:
Wikipedia wrote:Each square has two names, depending on the viewpoint of White or Black. Each file is given a name corresponding to the piece that occupies the first rank at the start of the game. Thus, in English descriptive notation the queen's file is named "Q" and the king's file is named "K". Since there are two each of the remaining pieces on the first rank, it is necessary to distinguish between them. The pieces on the queen's side of the board (to White's left; to Black's right) are named with respect to the queen, i.e. "queen's rook", "queen's knight" and "queen's bishop"; and have the shortened names "QR", "QN" and "QB", respectively. Similarly, the pieces on the king's side (White's right; Black's left) are named with respect to the king, i.e. "king's rook", "king's knight" and "king's bishop"; and have the shortened names "KR", "KN" and "KB". The rank is given a number, ranging from 1 to 8, with rank 1 being closest to the player.
This method of naming the squares means that each square has one name from White's point of view and another from Black's. For example, the corner square nearest White's left hand (i.e. square a1 in algebraic notation) is called "queen's rook 1" (QR1) by White and "queen's rook 8" (QR8) by Black.
When recording a move by White, the naming from White's point of view is used; when recording a move by Black, the naming from Black's point of view is used.
There are many other kinds of notation that are currently more popular (such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICCF_numeric_notation), but this will get us started. If you prefer any other notation, just let me know.
