Anyone miss descriptive notation?

No, and also whenever I see an opponent who uses descriptive notation, I feel my chances of defeating him increase substantially  

LOL, I think when I play tournament chess again, I'm going to write my moves in Descriptive Notation!  Hopefully, the other guy gets overconfident, loses the game because of it, and then mutters to himself afterwards, "How could I lose to this old fart who still uses Descriptive Notation!!!   What the frack!  I'm losing rating points to this old POS!"

And I'll be doing major Poker Face.  But inside, I'll be doing, "Tee, hee."

You absolutely should do that!

@SeniorPatzer  Even better, while you're using Descriptive, use "Kt" for knight, as if all your chess books are Dover reprints.

My own personal preference for Chess Notation is long algebraic, also known as coordinate.  1. e2-e4 e7-e5 instead of 1. e4 e5.  To me, that seems the most intuitive:  you are moving the piece on the square identified,  (for example square e2),  to the the destination square, ( again, example square e4).  Coordinate notation avoids the ambiguities that sometimes arise when two pieces may go to the same square or one must decide which piece has the legal move.

Examples of ambiguities that I have found in Descriptive.  One has both bishops on the board and are capable of capturing an enemy pawn.  BxP leaves you two choices.  Or, you have still have both bishops, and they may not be on their original (starting) squares, (say both are the on the queenside),  and they may both move to B4;  and the score lists the move as KB-B4.  I know that there are naming conventions for Descriptive that are supposed to be used; but, there are examples of where the player did NOT see the other move and followed that convention.  The same can be said of Algebraic (short).

And example, from a book I recently read, had a position where the Black Knights were at d7 and d5.  And the author stated that it would be unwise for Black to move the Knight to f6 as it weakens Black's position.  I swear, that is all the annotation that the author gave for justifying not moving a Knight to f6.

So the primary reason that I use long Algebraic is that I do not see how one can record an ambiguous move using that system.  I used to record the games that I used to play OTB.

A question:  I saw that another poster to this thread posted that FIDE only recognizes algebraic notation for its sanctioned games.  I am going to assume that it is short algebraic notation---not long, though that is not explicitly stated.  Or, will FIDE recognize either?

Generally, the Bishops are on opposing colors.

Ummm, unless you have promoted a pawn to a bishop, you are never going to have a situation where both bishops can make the same capture or move to the same square...

Long algebraic is not needed as long as the short notation is properly used, and that includes standard ways of clarifying which piece is indicated when there there are two or more possibilities.

Edit:  Batgirl beat me to it...that's what I get for being verbose .

I don't get irritated, except when I lose to such players.

As a scientist who is disgusted that the USA hasn't gone metric - it should have been done 40 years ago at least, I liked the switch in USCF chess to algebraic notation.  When I played International Postal Chess in the 1970's, we had to use long-form algebraic notation: 1 e2-e4 c7-c5, 2 g1-f3, etc. which avoided the different letters for different pieces in different languages.  I like the abbreviated form, 1 e2 e4 2 Nf3, etc. better, but I still prefer algebraic notation in general.

Wouldn't 1.Bxb7 be something like BxQN7?

On queenside stuff, you moved the one that was closest to the queenside.

Because if we'd allowed those globalist anarchists to impose the metric system on us, then soon they would have put flouride in our water supply to pollute our precious bodily fluids!!  (with a nod to the late Gen Jack D. Ripper.)

Thanks to all who have responded to my post; especially BoggleMeBrains for a much clearer explanation, with diagram, of what I was speaking of regarding the example Bishop move I gave.  Demonstration:  get out our physical chess set and place a White  Bishop on KB7 (f7) and on KN5(g5).  The game listing tells you to make the move B-B4.  Do I move the Bishop on KB7, f7,  to QB4, c4; (1. Bc4), or do I move the Bishop on KN5, g5, to KB4, f4; (1. Bf4)?

It is also confusing to me, my chess books are mostly in Descriptive Notation, when in the same position stated above, the move is listed as 1. KB-B4.  In this example, the question here is the same question as in the one above example.: is it  1. Bc4 or 1. Bf4?  Both White Bishops are on the Kingside,  which one you do you move?  In some listings I have come across, where there are two pieces of the same type, be it Rook, Knight, or Bishop, are on the same side of the board, Kingside or Queenside, and the listing states something like 1. KNxP; where either Knight can capture an enemy Pawn.  Which Knight do you move?

@MickinMD:  I, as an American, agree.  The United States should have converted to the Metric System decades ago.  Conversion is very long overdue.  My personal opinion as to why this country has not converted  is this:  The United States is the richest and one of the  most industrialized country on the Earth.  Because we control over 70% of the world's wealth, we can impose our system of antiquated measures upon the world no matter how inconvenient or nonsensical it is to the rest of the world.   In other words, because we are rich, we can through our 'weight around'.  Ostensively it is because businesses in the U.S. do not wish to spend the money to convert.

I will leave my opinion at that about converting because this is a chess forum---not a political one.

Understanding which piece to use when either can be used is equally ambiguous regardless of the notation, so provisions are there to clarify thing.  eg. Ncxe5 / Nfxc5 = QKtxQP / KKtxQP or Q.Kt.xQ.P. / K.Kt.xQ.P. or simply QNxP / KNxP. 

So while Descriptive might require more effort that Algebraic, it's not the least ambiguous.

It matters not which side of the board the pieces are situated.  Pieces are identified by their original position.  The Rook of the Queen's side in the startup position is always the Queen's Rook.

As odd as it might seem, Algebraic, or at least coordinate systems of notation had been around for nearly a millennium.  For some reason they never caught on in many countries such as Spain, Italy, France, the UK, the USA until the late 20t century.  Denmark, Germany, Russia, for example seem to have always used algebraic. 

Since Descriptive is relative while Algebraic is absolute, one might have been considered arty and the other scientific.  It might also be that Descriptive notation more closely mimics pre-computer players' thought prossess.  I don't know, but regardless of it's simplicity, conciseness and precision, Algebraic didn't catch on for over two centuries in most countries despite it's highly recognized use in other countries.

I agree with one commenter, that D.N. is more prone to transcription errors. It's also sometimes a bit harder, though hardly impossible,  to determine which piece is being named.

I transcribe several dozen games/month from Descriptive in many languages into Algebraic and the only ambiguities I encounter are those I create for myself.

One might also write Kt(5)xKP instead of KKtxP. In many older books, it was necessary to recall which knight was which. This was made easier by chess sets that marked the knights on their base, but is of less help when entering these in a database. I have seen collector sets for sale that still mark the knights.

I agree with you that descriptive should be no more ambiguous, but in practice I find that more errors are made even by those who know no other notation.

I, too, regularly transcribe games from old books.

That's what I mean by descriptive takes more effort... and it's much easier to be ambiguous... but the systems are equally precise when accurately used.

One of the nice things about algebraic is that it's pretty much universally accepted whereas in older days there were many variations of descriptive along with many other systems. 

I'm old enough to have learned DN first. But I can't say I miss it.

I prefer Figurine Algebraic Notation, but it takes too long to write down moves in time trouble.

I remember that DrSpudnik. That thread went on for months.

We have a winner!