How move annotations work
This is how move annotations work.
To get the first letter, Each piece besides a pawn has its own letter. Whatever piece moved, you use its letter.
Knight: N
Bishop: B
Queen: Q
King: K
Rook: R
And pawns don’t have a letter.
Let’s say our moving piece is a rook. So far we have this:
R
If the piece captured another one (including en passant) then the next letter is a lowercase x.
Let’s assume the rook captured a bishop.
We now have this:
Rx
Then there are files and ranks. The files are the rows on the board. For example, all the black pawns start on the same rank. And files are the columns. If our rook landed on the a-file on the 8th rank, It landed on a6. We then add that.
Rxa6
That is our rook’s annotation. But pawns are more complicated at times, and more simple at times. Let’s say a pawn moved to c5 the next turn. The annotation would simply be c5. But if a pawn captured another piece, our first letter will be the file the pawn was on originally.
If our pawn was on the d-file, and captured on c7, Then our annotation would be dxc7.
But promotion complicates things. If the pawn was on d-file and captured on c8 and promoted to a rook, the annotation would be dxc8=R. Whenever a pawn promotes, you add an =, and then you add the letter of the piece you promoted to. And if this move is checkmate, it would be dxc8=R#. Any checkmates end with a hashtag, but any check ends in a plus, meaning if it was just check it would be dxc8=R+. And lastly, sometimes 2 pieces that are the same color are attacking the same square. For example, if a rook is on a8 and another is on c3, they both target c8. If someone tells you they moved Rc8, Where is that? Well if the moving rook was on c3, The annotation would be Rcc8, because the rook moved from the c-file. But what if they are on the same file? Let’s say there are 2 knights, one on d3 and one on d5. If the d3 knight moves to b4, then the annotation would be N3b4, because the knight moved from the 3rd rank.
Thanks for reading this blog and have a nice day!
