Beginners

How to Read and Write Chess Notation

By the Chess Checkmate editorial team · Updated October 19, 2026 · 7 min read

Chess notation is the shorthand players use to record moves. Once you can read it, every book, puzzle and annotated game opens up to you, and you can write down your own games to study them later. The modern standard is called algebraic notation, and you can learn it in about fifteen minutes.

Naming the squares

Every square has a name made of a letter and a number. The files (the vertical columns) are lettered a to h, starting from White's left. The ranks (the horizontal rows) are numbered 1 to 8, starting from White's side. So the square in White's bottom-left corner is a1, and the square in Black's top-right corner, from White's view, is h8.

A quick check that you have the board set up correctly: a1 is always a dark square, and each player has a light square in the right-hand corner nearest to them. At the start, White's king stands on e1 and Black's king on e8; the queens stand on d1 and d8.

Piece letters

Each piece except the pawn has a capital letter:

A move is written as the piece letter followed by the square it lands on. You do not write where the piece came from unless it is needed (see disambiguation below). Pawn moves are just the destination square: e4 means "a pawn moves to e4". In other languages the letters change (German books use S for the knight, from Springer, for example), but the squares stay the same.

Moves are numbered in pairs. "1.e4 e5" means White's first move was e4 and Black's reply was e5. When a comment interrupts the pair, Black's move is written with three dots: "1...e5".

Captures, checks and checkmate

• Capture: put an x between the piece and the square. Bxc6 means the bishop captures on c6.
• Pawn captures: write the file the pawn came from, then x and the square. dxc6 means the d-pawn captures on c6.
• Check: add a plus sign. Bb5+ is a bishop move that gives check.
• Checkmate: add a hash sign. Qxf7# is a queen capture on f7 that gives checkmate.
• En passant: written like a normal pawn capture, to the square the capturing pawn lands on, sometimes followed by "e.p.".

Here is a short game you can follow using everything above. It is the well-known Scholar's Mate trap:

Read it aloud: White pushes the e-pawn to e4, Black answers e5; White's bishop goes to c4, Black's knight to c6; White's queen goes to h5, Black's other knight to f6; and the queen captures on f7 with checkmate.

Castling and promotion

Castling has its own symbols. O-O is castling kingside (the short side) and O-O-O is castling queenside (the long side). The FIDE Laws of Chess write these with zeros, 0-0 and 0-0-0, while computer formats such as PGN use the capital letter O. Both are understood everywhere.

For promotion, write the pawn move, then an equals sign and the new piece: e8=Q means a pawn reaches e8 and becomes a queen. Some books leave out the equals sign (e8Q). A promotion with capture and check might look like dxe8=Q+.

Disambiguation: when two pieces can reach the same square

Sometimes two identical pieces can move to the same square, and "Rd1" would not tell you which rook moved. In that case you add the file the piece came from, or the rank if the file is the same.

• Same rank, different files: add the starting file. Rad1 means the a-rook goes to d1; Rfd1 means the f-rook goes there.
• Same file, different ranks: add the starting rank. With rooks on e1 and e5, R1e3 and R5e3 tell them apart.
• Rare cases (usually after promotions, with three of the same piece) can need the full starting square, such as Qh4e1.

Knights cause this most often. In the opening 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3 e6 4.Nbd2, both the b1 knight and the f3 knight could go to d2, so White writes Nbd2.

Annotation symbols

Annotated games add symbols after a move to give the commentator's opinion. These are the standard ones:

Results are written 1-0 (White won), 0-1 (Black won) and 1/2-1/2 (draw). These symbols are opinions, not facts. A move marked "!" in an old book may turn out to be a mistake once checked with a modern engine, so treat them as a guide to where the critical moments are.

Older notation you may meet

Many older English-language books use descriptive notation, where squares are named from each player's own side and moves look like P-K4 (pawn to king four) or N-KB3. It is no longer used in official play, but if you inherit an old book, the key is that the same square has a different name for White and for Black. Algebraic notation avoids that problem, which is a big reason it replaced the older system.

PGN and FEN in brief

PGN (Portable Game Notation) is the text file format for whole games. A PGN file has tag lines in square brackets, such as [White "..."], [Black "..."], [Date "..."] and [Result "1-0"], followed by the moves in algebraic notation. Almost every chess program and website can import and export PGN, which is how you move your games between them.

FEN (Forsyth-Edwards Notation) describes a single position in one line. The starting position is:

rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1

It has six fields separated by spaces: the pieces rank by rank from rank 8 down to rank 1 (capital letters are White, lowercase are Black, digits count empty squares), the side to move, castling rights, the en passant target square, the halfmove clock used for the 50-move rule, and the move number. FEN is how puzzles and diagrams are shared, and you can paste one into our analysis board to set up any position.

How to practise this

• Play a game against the computer and write every move on paper as you go. Then enter it on the analysis board to check you recorded it correctly.
• Read an annotated game from our famous games page without a board, then replay it with one. Each time, you will need the board less.
• Learn the square colours: d4 and e5 are dark, d5 and e4 are light. Naming squares quickly makes calculation easier.
• If you play in tournaments, you will need notation for your scoresheet; see tournament rules and etiquette.

Practise with puzzles Play the computer