algebraic notation

ichabod,  thanks for the input, but I'm not sure it would be as beneficial as it first sounds. I'm not a programmer and have no idea whether such a things would be easy, hard or even possible, but whatever the case, it would be somewhat moot.  Since almost all desc. not. I run across is in printed form, it would have to be painstakenly transcribed by hand (though I guess it's possible to scan it and use some OCR, but that sounds even more complex and less-than-foolproof to me)  which would effectively eliminate any benefit. When I translate from desc. to alg., I open winboard, play through the moves, insert the tags and save the resulting PGN. However, often, even usually, I screw it up and have to keep plugging until I get it right.  I have a distinct feeling I'd screw up the transcription of the desc. not. into a progam just as often. But at least by playing through the moves, I'm forced to examine the game somewhat closely, giving me at the least some collateral benefit.

"Sarah is still as obviously intelligent as when we first ran into each other several years ago"

I think that must have been some other Sarah!

 Ah. Being a program I type fast, so typing in some descripting notation would be easier than playing through the moves. But I can see your point about getting a feel for the game. In fact, the computer would have to play through the game to catch moves like 'PxP', which are unambiguous only in the context of the pieces on the board and their possible moves.

However, being a programmer presented with a challenge, I'm probably going to write the program anyway.

There are some survivors from descriptive notation. Some people still say NxN, PxP, etc. We still refer to the Queen's Knight, King's Bishop. But I think DSB (Dark Squared Bishop) and LSB (Light Squared Bishop) says a lot more about the Bishop to which we are referring. What we commonly use is actually called descriptive Algebraic. The actual algebraic is square to square i.e. d2d4, b1c3, etc. e7e8 would depend on what kind of piece was on e7. Was it a King, Queen, Rook or Pawn? If it was a pawn then e7e8 promotes to what? In this case descriptive algebraic comes to the rescue, e8=Q! My big complaint about Figurine notation is that all the pieces are white. Why aren't the black moves designated by black figurines. Seems like that would be appropriate and make it a lot easier to read.

ichabod,  I look forward to seeing your application in action.

wormrose, I don't like figurine notation. It can't be copied and pasted into winboard.

Good for you.  You will get considerable satisfaction from 'making it work', I'm sure.

and a large KUDO to you when you complete it.

Algebraic notation seems like it should be called Alpha numeric Notation. Does it really have any thing to do with Algebra? I remember people starting to use it more in 1975 or so, at least at that time most tourneys were notated in Discriptive in my area but we were being told to start changing.....

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What I don't like is that descriptive notation is dependent on which side it is, that is pawn to king 4 can be met by black's move - pawn to king 4. What we'd call 'e5' in condensed algebraic. I find that books using descriptive notation are more likely to include errors due to the unwieldy and confusing system. As someone mentioned it is slightly better in exchanges, knight takes queen being better than Nxf4 (or whatever) arguably. Still, algebraic is much easier for me.

I bought a used book yesterday for $3 Canadian (that's a pittance) titled How to Play Chess written by the second world champion Emanuel Lasker. It appealed to me because there are 9 annotated games in it. What also caught my attention was a chapter on notation systems that references algebraic notation as we know it today.

I've been cruising the net trying to find out a bit more about this book but so far I've come up with very little. But I found something that hinted the book was written in 1900. If that's the case then algebraic notation was considered to be a viable alternative to descriptive notation long  before algebraic became the norm. Given that Lasker was a mathematician it's not surprising he was at least aware of algebraic.

Algebraic is less ambiguous and far easier to learn, to be sure. However, there is still a certain appeal to 1 P-K4 as it simply looks more like a chess move to me than 1 e4 . Since the descriptive was what I learned first I may have some bias towards it as almost all of my early chess books were also in descriptive. I dont recall when exactly I started keeping notation in algebraic in my own games but even today I sometimes like to use the old descriptive notation. I was using descriptive in a fide event here in Portugal and when the arbiter noticed it he told me that algebraic was MANDATORY. While I had no problem switching over it did irritate me some as it seems rules are becoming too "petty" imo. I have heard that in a scholastic event ( in Spain I believe)  a child was forfeited in their game for leaving the gameroom/area without getting permission from the arbiter first. Apparently the kid had to go to the toilet and toilets were not in the game room. This is a bit much and when I have to start getting permission to go pee I will give up tournament chess. I dont think I will be the only one.

H.J.R. Murray used algebraic in A History of Chess (1913) because he needed a system that "could be used uniformly for all the varieties of chess included;" he explains, "the ordinary English descriptive notation does not lend itself to such adaptation, I have adopted the literal or algebraic notation which is used in all German chess books" (20).

However, he denoted captures as in descriptive: Kt x R.

 Does the algebraic denote captures with a symbol? It seems I have seen  " : "  used to denote captures in some sources.

Reb,

I only recall seeing  x  to represent captures,  as in      QR x KN

When I first learned algebraic in the 70s, I noticed that German examples used the ":" for capture.

its a very good idea but its really annoying and diconcentrating when you have to write it down yourself when you are in real live tournaments. (i'm talking about the ones that really don't matter, so they don't bother employing a person to write down the moves).

 don't forget white pawn can also go to e5 square, if you are indicating a black move you should have three dots before the move like this  ...e5 the same for
...P-K4 this indicate is a black move.

I've seen the : in some texts. Informants use no symbol to denote captures. White's second move in the Scandinavian, for example, is written "ed," while on my scoresheet, I would write exd5.

I first became aware of algebraic notation when I started getting a little serious in 1975 because:

1. It was presented as the official international standard in the USCF official rule book I ordered before my first tournament games.
   
2. Larry Evans promoted it in his chess column with only a slight air of professional and Euro-centric elitism.
   

This was before chess programs on computers were much in the public eye or I had ever played one.  I played one of Ken Thomson's early efforts on a Unix system at UC Berkeley in 1976 and 1977 that I am pretty sure existed by 1975 (it liked to play the Marshall attack as black vs the Ruy).  The small commercial micro-based products did not appear until around 1977 (Chess challenger, Boris and other now laughably weak products).  So I do not think the impetus for algebraic had anything to do with computer chess.

I grew up mainly reading Descriptive, and even now I have to think for a second when dealing with the files f-g. Files a-e, for some reason, cause me no problem though.