What is Algebraic Notation?
I knew you were going to ask that. Algebraic notation is one way of textually representing the moves in a chess game. From White’s side of the board the rows are numbered 1-8 and the columns a-h. So White’s Queen Rook sits on a1, and his King Rook is on h1. White’s pawns are on a2-h2. When you move a piece from one square to another, you write it thus: Nd5, meaning you are moving a Knight to the square d5. If more than one of your knights can move to d5, you write it Ncd5 or N3d5, so as to remove the ambiguity. You don’t use “P” for pawns. If a piece captures, it is written as Nxd5, Ncxd5, N3xd5 as necessary (pawn captures are sometimes abbreviated like this: “cd,” but “cxd5” is preferred). It is not necessary to indicate en passant captures (I’m not telling you about en passant; get a beginner’s chess book or search the Web) as they should be obvious if the proper information is given. Some programs will put the enpassant information in the form of a comment, which is enclosed in curl
