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Context Dependency – in a chess notation (or any other notation) is a bad thing, if all else is equal.
The old Descriptive notation (N-B3) relied on context even more than does today’s common SAN or FAN notations. But there is still a lot of major information missing in SAN for moves like Nxd6:
[AA] What type of piece did the knight take?
[BB] From what square did the knight begin its move?
[CC] Which color knight made the move, White or Black?
With so much fundamental info missing, it is no surprise at all that most people make notation errors during a rated OTBoard chess game. SAN seems designed to minimize the amount of writing we do as we notate during our games. But that should not have led to the convention that books should use a notation so sparse as SAN.
In his brand new book “My 61 Memorable Games” (search Ebay.CA within the next couple of days), Bobby Fischer chose to use a colorized form of FAN notation, to solve CC.
Fischer uses white figurines for White moves, and black figurines for Black moves. This will help readers avoid human errors during replay.
BTWay, Chess Alpha 2 is one publicly available font that makes this mixed color figurine style possible, tho Fischer’s font is not that one.
Utilizing both White and Black figurines is something John Nunn should have done in his book “101 Brilliant Chess Miniatures”. Nunn mixed both live and analysis moves into large textual blocks. Nunn bolded the live moves to help the eye distinguish them from analysis. The problem of course is that there is no difference between a bold white rook and a nonbold white rook. So…
Nunn should have used black figurines for all live moves, and white figurines for all analysis moves. As it is, the book is physically difficult to read.
For those of us working in pen and paper, we can colorize by using uppercase letters for White pieces and lowercase for Black pieces, which is what I often do. Does it take more time during an OTBoard game to write “nxd6” than it does to write “Nxd6”? I bet most frequent tournament players have occasionally written White moves in the Black column, an error they would not make if they used lowercase for Black.
And this format enables bolding to distinguish live from analysis well.
By taking colorized notation further we can solve all three omissions AA BB CC, with:
Ne4:rd6
Hmmm, but are the two lowercase ‘b’ letters in the following a wee bit confusing?:
bb7:Be4
Then consider the potential of:
vb7:Ve4
… from Dictionary.com …
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vicar
results for: vicar
b. a bishop’s assistant in charge of a church or mission.
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Roman Catholic Church. an ecclesiastic representing the pope or a bishop.
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a person who acts in place of another; substitute.
A cleric acting in the place of a rector or bishop
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