Mourning the Demise of Descriptive Notation

Videos - the practice of quoting everything  ...

Ugg

I can read. Not going to bother with forever strings of quotes.

Because they like to assert themselves to show they have power over the lives of ordinary people, who play in the occasional chess congress or who play in some leagues that think they have to follow FIDE's rules, which, of course, they don't? FIFA is also corrupt. Both dominated by the EU.

Incidentally, I would not write exf but ef.

After having transliterated many, many hundreds of games, dating from the 18th century to the 1980s, from DN to AN, it's been my experience that all pieces retain their original description throughout the entire game: the KN is always the KN; the QR is always the QR; BP is always the BP (even after capturing and changing files).  Just as with AN, when ambiguity becomes possible, the piece will be described precisely but unlike AN which will describe the piece by indicating the square on which it sits, DN will describe the piece by indicating its name (KN or QN).   This is, in fact, much harder and more error-prone (and the bane of transliterating games).  I've also found that games in DN generally tend to have mistakes more so that those in AN.  

My friend, GM Andy Soltis, used to conduct a Q/A article for "Chess Life," called "Ask Dr. Chess."  He always used DN.  In June 1997 one reader brought him to task for this (I peiced this together as the original used different pages and columns)

It might be worth noting that in 1981, "Chess Life and Review" started printing this every month:


and in 1997, the were still printing something similar each month:

As I pointed out, that used to be the case but ceased to be the case. As I've clearly pointed out, I used descriptive in the late 80s. I learned it in 1987. The pieces did not retain their original labels.

I mean, people can ignore what I'm saying. That would just mean that they are not referring to the real World but to something in their imaginations. You either accept clear evidence or you do not.

Having looked at the newspaper article, I think you're misunderstanding it. It tells us that in descriptive, the files retain the names of the pieces that originally occupy them. So the g file is the King's Knight's file. I think perhaps you are translating that incorrectly, to mean that the King's Knight therefore retains that appellation throughout the whole game and must always be referred to as the KN. That isn't so. It may have been so a long time ago but the foolishness of such a situation was, of course, recognised. I vaguely remember a few pedants who continued to do that but I believe it was not a chess-legal way to notate because notation had to be intelligible to all. Descriptive and Algebraic are both intelligible and unambiguous. Algebraic is faster to notate and that's all.

That hasn't been my experience with any of the dozens of games I transliterated from that time frame.

Now that's interesting.

Perhaps but I was heavily involved in league chess and tournaments. I vaguely remember that there were a few crazies who used the Victorian method and I think it was made illegal because it was unintelligible. I have a hazy recollection of some arguments between arbiters and players concerning it. The point is that both players and the arbiter have to understand the notation used by each player. In such a crazy system, that wasn't possible.

Don't forget I'm English. I pointed out earlier that Americans, perhaps being more conservative, continued to measure engine sizes in cubic inches until relatively recently, and talk about old-fashioned horse power instead of b.h.p. Perhaps the change in chess notation came later? But where I play in the North of England, when I learned descriptive in the Summer of 87, I was taught the system I'm describing and that is what almost everyone used.

I used to have a lot of old chess books and some of the really old ones are quite unintelligible.

AN, an absolute notation, is much cleaner, simpler, more universal, and less confusing than DN. I don't know why is was never adopted in English, French, Spanish and Italian speaking countries 2 centuries ago as it was in German and Russian speaking countries but it wasn't.  My guess is that people who haven't familiarized themselves with using a coordinate system simply prefer to express the moves in the same way they think of the moves ["I'll move my King's pawn 2 squares" (P-K4)] and that's why the moves remained relative to the player.   It wasn't even until Philidor (circa. 1749) that the moves were actually numbered similarly to how we do it today and many different types of notations found their way into book and periodicals during its development.  

Actually, that would be written QNxQBP (or KBP) which is one specific pawn.

This statement by optimissed is totally false.

Pieces in Descriptive always retain the location in the original setup. Queenside and Kingside.
The files abcd forever remain the Queenside.

The files files efgh forever remain the Kingside. 
It does not matter that the King castles Queenside.

The pieces do not suddenly  reverse their description. Plain and simple. A perfect example of the confusion by people who get it wrong - giving out incorrect information.

Exactly. Descriptive gets to be convoluted and confusing for such examples. Hence the standard of algebraic was universally adopted.

It also can apply to the Rooks if two of the same color are on the board.

The King can be on the square c1. 
A Knight can be on the square c3 .

In descriptive - the c3 Knight is written as the Queens Knight - simply QN. It is not the Kings Knight when recording moves or reading notes. 
Confusion can happen with pawn captures along the d/e files. Point is - it does not matter where the King  or Queen reside during the game. They easily can change sides. The notation remains the same as if it were the starting position.

OK. Let`s move on, please.

Haha, I really didn't imagine it is possible to be so stupid. That  definition of descriptive was probably given in 1387 or something. That is, if he didn't just invent it. Things change and as I've stated, I learned descriptive in 1987 and the pieces were identified by the squares they inhabit. Anything else would cause total confusion. If it was once like that, it wasn't like that when algebraic came along. After all, at one time, pawns couldn't make a double move. Does he really think I'm imagining it?

I've a complete right to retaliate in kind. After all, he's either calling me a liar or senile. This BadBishopJones3 critter needs to learn not to make a fool of himself by trying to make a fool of others.