Chess Notation: How to Read and Write Algebraic Notation

Algebraic notation is the standard system for recording chess moves. Every square on the board has a unique name; every piece has a letter; every move is a short code like Nf3 or e4 or Bxc6+. Once you learn it, which takes about 20 minutes, you can read any chess game in any book, database, or website ever written.

This matters because chess is one of the best-documented games in history. Millions of games have been recorded and analyzed. Without notation, you can’t study any of them.

The board in algebraic notation

Files (columns): Labeled a through h, left to right from White’s perspective. The a-file is on White’s left; the h-file is on White’s right.

Ranks (rows): Numbered 1 through 8, starting from White’s side. Rank 1 is White’s back row; rank 8 is Black’s back row.

Every square has a unique name: file letter + rank number. The lower-right corner (from White’s perspective) is h1. The upper-left is a8. The center squares are e4, d4, e5, d5.

The piece letters

Piece	Letter
King	K
Queen	Q
Rook	R
Bishop	B
Knight	N
Pawn	(none)

Why N for knight? Simply because K is already taken by the king. Older English-language sources abbreviated the knight as “Kt” instead, and N only displaced it during the 20th century, notably after the Chess Amateur magazine dropped “Kt” for “N” during the First World War specifically to get German-looking abbreviations off its pages, of all things. (The actual German word for knight is Springer, “jumper,” and chess problem composers who wanted an internationally neutral notation for problems really did adopt “S” for it, a convention you’ll still see in some endgame studies. “N” for the everyday game is a different, English-language convention, not a translation of Springer.)

Pawns have no letter. If you see e4 with no piece letter in front, it’s a pawn move to e4.

How to read a move

Basic move: Piece letter + destination square.

• Nf3 = knight moves to f3
• e4 = pawn moves to e4
• Qd8 = queen moves to d8
• Bc4 = bishop moves to c4

Capture: Piece letter + x + destination square.

• Nxf6 = knight captures the piece on f6
• exd5 = pawn on the e-file captures on d5
• Bxc6 = bishop captures on c6

For pawn captures, the notation includes the file the pawn moved from: exd5 means a pawn on the e-file captures on d5.

Special symbols

Symbol	Meaning
+	Check
#	Checkmate
x	Capture
0-0	Kingside castling
0-0-0	Queenside castling
=	Promotion (followed by piece, e.g. =Q)
!	Good move
!!	Brilliant move
?	Mistake
??	Blunder
!?	Interesting/risky move
?!	Dubious move

Example: Nxf7+ means “knight captures on f7, giving check.”

Checkmate example: Qxh7# means “queen captures on h7, delivering checkmate.”

Promotion example: e8=Q means “pawn moves to e8 and promotes to a queen.” See our pawn promotion guide for when to promote to something other than a queen.

Disambiguation

When two pieces of the same type can move to the same square, you need to specify which one. You add the file letter (or rank number) of the moving piece.

• Nfd2 means the knight on the f-file moves to d2 (not the other knight)
• N1d2 means the knight on rank 1 moves to d2
• Rad1 means the rook on the a-file moves to d1

Occasionally file alone isn’t enough, two identical pieces share both a file and would otherwise be ambiguous by rank too, in which case notation falls back to the full departure square: Qh4e1 specifies the queen on h4 moving to e1 when another queen could also reach e1 from elsewhere. It’s rare, but it’s why the rule is “add whatever’s needed to remove ambiguity,” not a fixed single-character patch.

A note on older notation

If you ever pick up a chess book published before the 1980s, don’t be confused if the moves look nothing like this. Algebraic notation wasn’t always the standard, even though its roots go back further than you’d expect: a version of it was described by the Syrian-born player Philipp Stamma in the 1730s, and German and Russian chess literature had mostly adopted algebraic-style notation by the 19th century. English-language chess writing was the holdout. It ran on descriptive notation instead, where the same opening move was written P-K4 (“pawn to king-four”) instead of e4, and every square had two possible names depending on whether you were counting from White’s side or Black’s side. FIDE finally stopped recognizing descriptive notation in official events in 1981, making algebraic the sole accepted standard, and the rest of the English-language chess world gradually followed.

The transition left some famous books in an awkward spot. Bobby Fischer’s My 60 Memorable Games was originally published in 1969 in descriptive notation. A 1995 algebraic edition converted the moves but also altered enough of Fischer’s original text that Fischer himself publicly disowned it. The edition now sold, the 2008 Batsford/Pavilion printing, used a computer program built by grandmaster John Nunn to convert the notation faithfully while restoring Fischer’s original prose. It’s the version linked from our equipment and history pages (affiliate), and the notation story behind it is a real example of why the switch to algebraic mattered enough to redo entire books over.

Reading a full game

Games in algebraic notation list moves in pairs: White’s move, then Black’s. Move numbers precede each pair.

Example opening: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5

This reads:

• Move 1: White plays pawn to e4; Black plays pawn to e5
• Move 2: White plays knight to f3; Black plays knight to c6
• Move 3: White plays bishop to c4; Black plays bishop to c5

This is the beginning of the Italian Game: covered in our Italian Game guide.

PGN (Portable Game Notation)

PGN is the standard file format for chess games: essentially algebraic notation with a header. If you download game files from databases like chess.com or lichess, they’ll be in PGN format. The moves are standard algebraic notation; the header adds metadata like player names, date, and result.

You can paste PGN into any chess analysis tool (Lichess’s board editor, Chess.com’s analysis, ChessBase) and replay the game move by move.

Practice

The fastest way to internalize notation is to replay games while reading them. Logical Chess: Move by Move (affiliate) is ideal for this. Every single move is annotated, which forces you to read the notation carefully rather than skimming.

Also see: chess for beginners and how to improve at chess.

Sources

• FIDE Laws of Chess, Appendix on notation
• FIDE Laws of Chess, Article 8 and Appendix C, FIDE Rules Commission
• Algebraic notation (chess), Wikipedia (history, 1981 FIDE standardization)
• My 60 Memorable Games, Wikipedia (notation history of the Batsford editions)
• Chernev, Irving. Logical Chess: Move by Move. Batsford. (affiliate)