Anyone miss descriptive notation?

Exactly!! :-)

<Uncle Bent> Please read my above comment again, CAREFULLY. 

Focus on the FIFTH word, if you will... :-)

Looks like that word totally applies to YOU as well!!!!

@solskytz ah! you made a pun.  Congratulations.  But why does that apply to me?  I just have to get new reading glasses.

Well looks like I got you a bit "decepticated"...

It is not an easy historical question, batgirl. Computers undoubtedly contributed. I think another important factor was the internationalization of chess book publishing. Several posters in similar threads have mentioned learning algebraic when they started reading Informant.

As is well-known, Bobby Fischer learned Russian well enough to take advantage of magazines published there. As figurine algebraic came into use by more publications, the need to learn other languages grew less important (although still useful for the explanations).

I think that computers may have hurried matters along, but the word globalization might best describe the principal cause. Globalization also gave us standard rules so that one castled the same way in London as in Rome, ...

A few weeks ago, I found Karel Traxler's analysis of his famous victory online in PDF. It is in algebraic and was published in 1892.

   I miss it. It's what I learned as a boy, but, also, I can't stand the way the world just has to go digital and mathematical on everything. Can't we have anything that's descriptive?

I use a combination in OTB games. I use Algebraic mainly, but for captures I use Descriptive, so I can see them all by looking at the scoresheet, and it can be easier to find positions in after game analysis - you wouldn't know what pieces are captured where, by just using Algebraic.

There definitely are solid arguments for Algebraic Notation and Standardization, but it just seems like, like, like, ....

GLOBALIST TOTALITARIANISM!!

Signed, 

The Descriptive Notation Nationalist    

Exactly, TwoQOneC. I've been doing it for a couple of decades, I guess. I'm sure I got the idea from someone and it makes perfect sense.

"I use Algebraic mainly, but for captures I use Descriptive, so I can see them all by looking at the scoresheet, and it can be easier to find positions in after game analysis - you wouldn't know what pieces are captured where, by just using Algebraic."

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!!  May Descriptive Notation Live On in some form or another!

Too right!  Of course it's probably illegal to write your scoresheet like that, but I've never been pulled up for it.

@batgirl:  You are correct when you state that both Algebraic and Description have methods to remove ambiguities from game listings.  Some were listed in other posts.  Usually by adding another character, i.e., instead of N-B3, Nc3 you would write N-QB3, Nee4.  The player just has to remember there are rules for writing down moves when two of same type piece can move to the same square or both can move to a square with the same name.  (My example with the Bishops in my earlier posts.)

As I have stated earlier, I prefer Coordinate (or long Algebraic) Notation.  One does not have to remember the special rules for recording a move when two pieces of the same type can arrive at the same square.  Using Coordinate you simply record the starting square and the ending square, 1. e4 becomes 1. e2-e4.  How can one have an ambiguous move using Coordinate?

Loved your post about the rise of computers in chess.  I remember those days.  I had a TRS-80 Model II with a whopping 16K RAM back in 1977!  The programming language was Radio Shack's version of BASIC.  I spent months trying to write a chess program for it.   (I finally gave up; it was a just too hard to do.)  In those days, computer memory was at a premium.  A programmer tried to use as little memory as possible and get the job done.  The programmer also tried to use the fastest instructions the machine allowed.  (Processor speeds in those days was extremely slow by today's standards.)  Anyway, when a player was trying to input a move into the computer using Descriptive one would also have to have some mechanism for determining which side, White or Black, was moving and what the destination square that was on the chessboard.  This would mean having two subroutines:  one for White, one for Black.  However, when using Algebraic, (actually Coordinate), there would only need to be one subroutine---saving both memory and time.  Also, the larger the program code, the easier it is to make a mistake.

Computer chess was, I feel, a significant factor in making Algebraic the world standard.  Another, as someone else said, was the globalization of chess publications was another major factor.

In the early 1980s I bought Fidelity's "Chess Challenger 7".  I enjoyed many a chess game using it.  I eventually got to the point where I could beat the unit 3/4 the time---if I did not hang a piece.  Being young then, life happens, and I no longer really had the time for chess.  And, by the '80s, the coordinate system was fixed to today's standard:  files are a-h and rows are 1-8.

Recording moves for your opponent isn't an issue... you just have to visualise the board from the side that was making the move. Switching between sides is actually very easy. For example, your B4 is my B5. I just need to count how many sqrs you have moved up from your side of the board.

Another example: You push pawns up the board regardless whether you are playing white or black. However, as black, your move notation goes smaller as your pawn advances in rank... does that make sense to you?

Don't you see that what you are suggesting is to visualise the board from white's perspective regardless which side you are playing? This is the same as moving your chair so that you sit beside white's. I'm sure there's a reason why they don't make boards big enough for players to sit side by side

No, I don't think it's an easy historical question either and not one that can be answered glibly.  A catalyst isn't an immediate cause but rather something that helps get the ball rolling or to propel something along. There can be many catalysts.  It seems around 1977 a variety of things gelled and the result was an almost instantaneous general acceptance of algebraic as the standard notation, which of course led to an official acceptance.

I'd never seen Traxler's original published analysis... thanks.

Back in 1821, Ivan Alexandrovich Butrimov published Russia's first chess book, "Chess Play."  It was in algebraic:

Three years later Petroff published his chess manual, "The Game of Chess Systemized with the Addition of Philidor's Games with Accompanying Notes" also in algebraic:

Ironically, Petroff was a big fan of Philidor who eschewed coorinate notation for descriptive.

In the US, by the end of the 1970s every major chess book publisher was using algegraic, and every significant Chess Magazine and state periodical had either converted to algebraic or was in the process of conversion.  The last holdouts, may have been the weekly newspaper columnists. ( But I think the Robert Byrne's column in the NY Tmes had switched to algebraic in 1978?)  Computer chess had yet to make much of a presence in the late 1970s.  My first encounter was with the Chess Challenger system in 1979, I think.  So, from my recollection Computer Chess did not have much of an impact in the conversion to algebraic.  However, even into the 1980s and beyond there were still "pockets of resistance" amongst players that still preferred descriptive.  The rapid expansion of computer chess made these "pockets" irrelevant.

I still know a few, older chessplayers who uses descriptive, even in rated OTB play.  Descriptive notation still is relevant, because of the enormous amount of chess books that were published before 1977.  Many have been republished using algebraic, but why should I get a new "21st Century" edition, when I have the descriptive-notation on my bookshelf.  (And not all republishing of algebraic versions have gone well -- see this link over the republishing of Fischer's "My 60 Memorable Games." https://www.chess.com/blog/JamieDelarosa/fischers-quotmy-60-memorable-gamesquot---the-controversy

 Thanks Uncle Bent for that reference link.  Here's an excerpt that's pertinent:

"The original game scores and annotations are in English Descriptive Notation.  Fischer used EDN on his own scoresheets."

Fischer even used descriptive in his 1992 Match with Spassky.   But, of course, Bobby was reading Russian Chess periodicals in the late 1950s, so, surely, he was very comfortable with algebraic.

Back in the early 1970s, you could get the Soviet periodical "64" delivered to you house 26 times a year, for something like $8!!  It was sent via sea-mail, so each issue would arrive weeks after the issue date.  If I remember it was around 8-16 pages, printed on newsprint, just packed with games... some annotated, some just games scores.  Of course it was all in algebraic, with Cyrillic characters for both the piece designations and annotations.  You had to be very dedicated to go through these games.  I wasn't.  A waste of $8.

Why use notation when you could do the RAR Attack?

https://www.chess.com/club/classic-rar 

I learned in descriptive, my first books being many by Reinfeld and a 1972 WC commentary. Not the Reshevsky one, though mine had light analysis along with the games, can't remember the author.