Smythescript?
Bill Smythe
When I played in H.S. (late 60’s) we didn’t use clocks either. I had an old checkerboard with some light, cheap plastic pieces that barely fit the squares. At college we did have a few clocks, and I still have a nice wooden one, mechanical, that actually still works.
Chess computers are nice, but not necessary. You and I both played and learned for many years without them. All you really need is a $5 vinyl board, $5 set of pieces, and an opponent. If you don’t have $10 or an opponent, you can find web sites where you can play chess for free. If you don’t have a computer, many public libraries have them for public use. And if you do have a computer, there are free chess engines and databases that will work on most operating systems.
That’s what’s so great about chess. You dont’ have to be rich to play it.
I could afford a chess computer, but I play for enjoyment, not money. Once I start having to spend time studying lines it starts drifting away from enjoyment (after I retire, or if I am ever in danger of hitting my floor, I may start studying).
Currently the only chess program I have on my laptop is WinTD (pairing and backroom software).
I wish I could use the Palm Tungsten for chess, because I use a computer all day at work and it gets tiresome to come home and sit in front of a screen for several more hours. I was looking forward to spending long winter evenings in the living room sitting near the wife, playing chess on the Palm and using it to study games while she watched TV. Also, when I take her to the mall I could either read or play chess while she shops.
Majestic Chess is a nice program for the PC, though.
@ jwiewel: I intend to play chess for enjoyment, as well. Not for money. To be honest, a lot of the game annotation I see is not very useful to me, because I just can’t follow the various alternate lines being described. I get completely lost. I can’t follow them in my head and I get frustrated trying to play out all those lines on my chess board. I’m not an expert or a master and I’m never going to be one. I just love the incredible beauty and depth of chess.
I recently followed one of the Fischer-Spassky games in Majestic Chess, and the annotation for that one was just deep enough, explaining the logic behind various moves and the strength or weakness of the resulting position.
In recent days I’ve discovered a number of sparsely annotated miniature games in back issues of Chess Life, and I’ve been learning a lot by playing through them.
I do not know what would work with your particular device, but it might perhaps be of some interest to get some general idea of the sorts of things that are available. For that purpose, you might want to look at Silman’s 2013 article (perhaps a little dated now), Dinos to the Slav: Silman on Apple Apps.
uschess.org/content/view/12291/719/
I have that sort of problem myself. Silman describes some "app"s that are helpful for looking at games and various lines, provided that one has the right sort of device. In 2010, Soltis wrote about the difficulty of finding the right sort of games and commentary to look at.
After about two pages discussing Logical Chess, Move by Move, Soltis seemed to drop his notion of a problem with studying master-vs.-master games.
uscfsales.com/logical-chess- … -move.html
chesscafe.com/text/heisman118.pdf
chesscafe.com/text/review465.pdf
Both of those specific books are somewhat controversial suggestions that have received much criticism from some. You might be able to find a descriptive notation version of the Chernev book, sold by someone who deals with very old books. For suggestions of game collections and other sorts of books, you might want to look at the Dan Heisman page at:
home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Eve … _Guide.htm
I am not able to write authoritatively about Simple Attacking Plans by Wilson,
uscfsales.com/simple-attacking-plans.html ,
because I have only read a few pages of it, but it looks to me like a book that manages to be helpful without being overwhelming. I probably should identify the Soltis book that I was quoting: Studying Chess Made Easy
uscfsales.com/studying-chess-made-easy.html
He doesn’t really make it easy, but I think there is helpful advice.
.
I have several cheap chess boards, and on some I put a yellow-sticky note on the f6 square. This increases my notation speed and reduces my rate of errors, where otherwise I more often confuse reciprocal column and row IDs - such as mistakenly notating ‘Ng4’ when I should notate ‘Nb5’.
The yellow-sticky is most helpful when I have replayed a lot of games from Black’s perspective, and then make mistakes on when I eventually switch to White’s perspective.
WHEN: In the USA around the time of A.Karpov’s first defense of his Match World Chess Championship title, which was in 1978 against V.Korchnoi.
I remember reading an old letter wherein a chess book publisher begged the USCF (I think) to firmly establish Algebraic as a replacement for Descriptive Notation. The publisher said that Algebraic was obviously better, but that his publishing house was afraid of unilaterally leading the way into Algebraic.
At the time, one argument against Algebraic was that the lowercase letters ‘c’ and ‘e’ too often look too similar outside their usage in words (where there is massive context to clarify). Some people and some fonts make it hard to see the little trapped space in the ‘e’.
WHY: Algebraic Notation is less verbose than is Descriptive Notation.
Also, Algebraic can be correctly decoded with less need of supporting context. This is not to say that today’s dominant SAN (Standard Algebraic Notation) is the best chess notation that can be engineered. Further reductions in context dependence can be achieved without paying a high cost in lots of extra verbosity, and without any dramatic change away from the familiar. But SAN is entrenched.
BOO THE MOVE-PAIR CONCEPT:
It is unfortunate that chess evolved with the arbitrary, unnecessary, and misleading concept of a move-pair. The move-pair concept overloads each move number by using it for both a white and a black move:
13…f5
One problem is that sometimes it is unclear what a chess author means by a “move”.
Better would be a numbering system used for Shogi, which if used in chess would look like the following:
- e4 e5
- Nf3 Nc6
- Bb5 a6
By using only odd numbers for white moves, and only even numbers for black moves, instead of 13…f5 we could write the cleaner:
26. f5
This odd-even numbering system would also bring psychological clarity to how many moves are really in a chess game. To me ‘26’ gives a different and more accurate feeling and perception than I get from the misleading ‘13’.
Until .PGN readers can understand the odd-even system, the odd-even is unusable.
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So in a 40/2 time control White would make the time control on move 79 and Black would make it on move 80? That would be a little confusing.
Baseball is also confusing, as in a nine inning game not only do the Mariners play nine innings of offense, but they also play nine (sometimes eight) of defense.
Alex Relyea
The 50-move rule would have to change to a 100-move rule (or do things like accept that some K+N+B vs K positions cannot be won within the move limit). The definition of a complete scoresheet would have to be changed. The Sofia rule would have to use move 60 instead of move 30. All current clock punch counters would become obsolete (that isn’t necessarily bad).
Either the time control (such as 40/120 averaging 3 minutes per move) would not indicate the move number that it covered (move 80), or it would have to be written differently (80/120) and would not show the number of moves each player has to make nor the average minutes per move, of it could be written 80/240 to show the correct average number of minutes and max total time in the time control, but would no longer show how much time each player has.
Not by me. 
I guess I’m just a dinosaur. And I’m one of those people who sometimes finds it difficult to tell the difference between “c” and “e.” Especially after a long day at work.
Alas, my wife and I don’t have smart phones and we don’t have an ipod, so we are not part of the world of apps. We just have simple cellphones and a pay-as-you go plan. We had a laptop, but it died a few months ago.
Gosh, I have wasted so much time over the last week trying to find a way to sync the Tungsten E2 to Windows 7 so that I can load Chess Tiger onto it. Time on the Microsoft website. Time on the HP website–apparently HP bought Palm and has more or less tossed all the older devices into the trash bin. Oh well. It’s too bad that there is not an affordable mobile chess “solution” for me. I get so tired of sitting here in front of the PC.
I don’t know if it would be very close to what you want, but I think you can get some sort of hand-held chess playing device from Radio Shack for about $30.
Here is another 2010 Soltis quote.
For the July 2014 issue of Chess Life,
In the long past days of the trans-atlantic radio matches, they started using algebraic and quickly switched to descriptive after finding out in one early game that White thought he was facing a double e-pawn opening and Black was playing a Sicilian.
I prefer algebraic to descriptive by far (and I grew up with descriptive), but it is true that even though I am quite a neat writer, sometimes in my handwritten scoresheets it can be hard to tell c’s and e’s apart.
And g. Still, context can help.
Alex Relyea
To make sure my ‘c’ and ‘e’ are not confused, I write ‘c’ as √E͞/͞M͞.
Even better, if you measure the speed of light in light-years per year, then c=1, so why don’t you just write 1 instead of c?
Bill Smythe
I will try there. Thanks!
These quotes from Soltis describe exactly how I feel as I reintegrate myself into the world of chess. I am laughing out loud and shaking my head as I type this. 
Subject: Why algebraic notation?
Subject: Why algebraic notation?
I have tried to think of more examples of the sort of book that might be helpful. Some that come to mind are Simple Chess by Michael Stean, The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played by Irving Chernev, Winning Chess Brilliancies by Yasser Seirawan, and World’s Most Instructive Amateur Game Book by Dan Heisman.
uscfsales.com/simple-chess-n … ition.html
chesscafe.com/text/review400.pdf
uscfsales.com/chess-books/ch … layed.html
uscfsales.com/chess-books/ch … ncies.html
uscfsales.com/chess-books/ge … -book.html
With some industrious effort, it might be possible to find someone still selling a descriptive notation edition of the Stean book. That is the only one of these that I have experience with. The first few chapters looked good to me, but I never got around to finishing it.
Chernev’s book is one of my absolute favorites.
I have also gotten a great deal of enjoyment [and knowledge] from Fred Reinfeld’s “Great Brilliancy Prize Games of the Chess Masters” and P. Wenman’s “100 Chess Gems.”
If you liked Chernev’s “Instructive” book, it might be a good idea to try his Logical Chess, Move by Move.
uscfsales.com/logical-chess- … -move.html
As I mentioned before (Subject: Why algebraic notation?), it is a somewhat controversial suggestion, but certainly a number of people approve of it, and you might be able to locate a copy of the original descriptive version if you want. The algebraic version has been somewhat revised by John Nunn.
chessskill.blogspot.com/2013/01/ … eview.html
theweekinchess.com/john-watson-r … cent-books
USCF is currently selling the descriptive notation books, The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess by Irving Chernev, Chess for Amateurs by Fred Reinfeld, and The Great Chess Masters and Their Games by Fred Reinfeld.
uscfsales.com/1000-best-shor … chess.html
uscfsales.com/chess-for-amateurs.html
uscfsales.com/great-chess-ma … games.html
Perhaps it is worthwhile to consider one other observation from the July 2014 issue of Chess Life.