Bxc4
See appendix C
https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/E012018
What is the proper way to write chess notation?
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Bxc4
There's never any need to put the origination square of a piece or pawn. If there's any ambiguity, you write the origination file as the first option and the origination rank as the second. If it's pawn on c5 takes pawn on d6 and there's no ambiguity, write cd. If it's a piece on d6, most people would write cxBd6 but if the only possibility of a pawn taking something on the d-file is that, then cd is still adequate. The idea is to convey all the necessary info, with no ambiguity, in as few chacacters as possible. Any extra desription is for the player's own benefit only.
I have personally never seen “cxBd6,” ever. I’ve seen cd, cxd, cxd6, PxB, Px(Q)B, Px(Q6)B, c5-d6, c5xd6, which are all fine as long as they are consistent. But there’s never two pieces that can occupy a square at once, so cxBd6 just seems redundant at best
busterlark wrote:
I have personally never seen “cxBd6,” ever. I’ve seen cd, cxd, cxd6, PxB, PxQB, c5-d6, c5xd6, which are all fine as long as they are consistent. But there’s never two pieces that can occupy a square at once, so cxBd6 just seems redundant at best
Very common in the UK. Some of what you have seen, I don't like, such as c5-d6 and cxd.
The reason for cxBd6 is that there was an extremely strong convention always to denote pieces but not pawns so if there's no denotation, you know it's a pawn.
Interesting. I guess most of the books I read were translated into American English, so I don't see that much. Other than that, I think the only UK-based author I've read is Jonathan Rowson, but that's just one author, so that's such a small sample size. Thanks for the info!
I haven't played tournaments for about 20 years but I played county and club chess til about 5 years ago. 25 years ago, many people were only just changing over from descriptive, and that was the system that was pushed in the UK, to accomodate people who prefer piece descriptions.
I've seen some people write Be6xBc4 and some people write Be6xc4 and some other people write Bxc4 and Bc4. What is the correct way to write chess notation?