I eliminated the problem of errors in my OTBoard hand-written notation by switching from SAN to XSAN (extended SAN).
XSAN is much better than LAN, and indeed LAN kinda sucks. LAN is not compact, LAN does not tell you the type of piece that was captured, LAN does not tell you the color of the piece that moved, and LAN cannot be played in reverse. And worst of all LAN physically separates (a) the type of piece that moved from (b) the destination square, thus making LAN hard to read and translate into a replayed move by hand.
The additional info in XSAN is technically redundant and thus unnecessary, yet the need for the redundancy is proven in my opinion and experience. In practice SAN is flawed for OTBoard usage - as anyone who tries to reconstruct chess games from tournament scores sheets well knows.
Example_A: Rook captures a queen.
SAN - Rxe5
LAN - Re8xe5 XSAN - r:e5.8/Q (“A black rook captures on square e5, as the rook moved from row 8, a white queen.”)
Typically whenever you are uninterested in the extra info that XSAN offers, you simply stop reading the notation for the current move after you read the initial portion which mimics SAN. You cannot do that with LAN. Yet the majority of chess books continue to use some LAN, especially in analysis comments.
Example_B: Pawn captures a pawn.
SAN - dxe4
LAN - d5xe4 XSAN - d5:e4 (The color of the moving pawn is encoded by the delta in row numbers. By sensible convention, the ending “/P” is usually omitted when a pawn is the captured piece, and only when a pawn is the captured piece.)
I still make mistakes when I notate a game by hand, but my use of XSAN with its richer info always enables me to correct the mistakes later.
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Indeed. In fact, if this were presented as algebraic notation in a FIDE event where I was the arbiter, where use of algebraic notation is required by rule and arbiters are expected to be interventionist, I would direct the user of whatever this notation is to reconstruct his scoresheet in SAN on his own time.
For that matter, I fail to understand what’s so confusing about standard algebraic.
Rxe5 obviously indicates that a Rook captured on e5. If more than one Rook can make that capture, the letter of the file (or number of the rank) immediately follows the R (R2xe5, for example).
The only thing the move doesn’t tell you is what piece was captured. However, if you’re playing through the game, that should be not so difficult to figure out.
XSAN looks longer to write than descriptive notation, while being more confusing. The examples do not inspire usage. I will stick with my mix of algebraic and descriptive notations. It is still faster to write PxP than e4xd5.
I don’t find it confusing, just awkward. It isn’t how I learned the game. To put it differently, it’s like I’m learning a second language, but I’m not thinking in that second language. It was a big surprise to pick up a copy of Chess Life in the mid 1990s and find that at first I could not understand any of the notation.
If you learned chess using algebraic, or if you were active in chess during the transition period, it probably is not awkward at all.
In the March 2015 issue of Chess Life, John Hartmann had a nice article called “Chernev and Soltis Revisited.” In it he reviewed three classic books: “The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played” (Chernev), “The Inner Game of Chess” (Soltis) and “New Art of Defence In Chess” (Soltis). I bought the Chernev book back in the day, and I still enjoy reading it and playing out the games.
At the end of his article, Mr. Hartmann writes:
“So many good chess books have been allowed to fall into obscurity over the years. Sometimes this is because the books have gone out of print, while in other cases, it is because today’s players cannot decipher the older descriptive notation.”
I nearly fell over laughing when I read that, because that is EXACTLY how I feel about algebraic notation.
You’ll find that if you make an effort to use it continuously for about a week, it becomes second nature and easy to use both. Complaining about it reminds me of young students who say “Do I HAVE to keep score?”
Years ago when I took my first chess team to a rated tournament (from pre-school through 6th grade) ALL of the players could keep score - they weren’t allowed to go unless they did. The parents of many players there said “How did you get them to do it?” I replied “Well first, I never allowed them to believe it was hard - instead, it was necessary.”
My response to you is to apply Nike’s slogan. Just do it. The “transition period” was not magical to all players - it still needed to be learned player by player – we have individual minds! So just have your own transition period, and move on.
That is exactly what I did from about the middle of last October through Thanksgiving. Three or four evenings a week, trying to analyze games. I analyzed games from the magazine, tried to play through some games from the Solitaire Chess section, and printed out and played through a bunch of interesting short games from The Check is in the Mail.
But the week of Thanksgiving I became so frustrated that I just put my little chess board away and went back to spending my evenings reading political thrillers and watching the Cleveland Cavaliers on TV with my wonderful wife. I still flip through every new issue of Chess Life and read some articles that interest me. Last winter I briefly toyed with the idea of entering a tournament. From time to time I look up and read online bios of great chess players of the past, because I’m fascinated by the many “characters” that have played our game over the centuries. And I do continue to pick up my ragged, yellowing copy of Fred Reinfeld’s “Great Brilliancy Prize Games of the Chess Masters” from time to time.
The thing is, chess is not something that I HAVE to do. It’s something that I do in my spare time. It’s something that should be intellectually stimulating and, most of all, FUN. I wonder how many “returning” players like me find the new notation to be more trouble than it’s worth. I wonder how many conclude that the game they love, the game that brought them so much enjoyment in their younger years, has just passed them by, and wind up retreating to old books and old memories.
The challenge for me, I suppose, is to find some way to reconnect with what the game has become since I last played regularly.
When I switched over to algebraic notation it worked best for me by simply using it during games. I think trying to learn it by study games would be akin to learning to program by simply reading books about programing. In order for it to sink in and become muscle memory you have to actually use it.
Why not go to a chess club and play some practice games? Don’t worry about the result. Refresh your mechanics of writing down the moves, but this time using algebraic notation to get the hang of it better. A few games is all it takes. You don’t have to play in a tournament yet. Use each practice game to work on something you feel uncomfortable with. Once it starts to feel right, you will be hungry to try a tournament. Remember, tournament chess is not for everybody. You can enjoy chess perfectly well without playing in tournaments.
Have used descriptive most of my tournament career of 44+ years. Working with kids made me switch over to algebraic. Usually my score sheets are a mix of algebraic and descriptive. In time pressure, I usually slip back into descriptive for a few moves out of habit. Using algebraic often leads to a lot neater and clearer scores to review. Since it takes up less space to write in the block, you have extra space to note the time on the clock, too.
I agree with all that. My point is that - (as a chess instructor) - I would suspect that 95% of the issue you have with algebraic is likely the attitude you have about algebraic. Algebraic is less confusing. It allows chess books to be sold in more countries - and thus helps to have print runs be larger. It means that players don’t have to re-write their manuscripts twice to post. If I were writing an article - would I write it for most of the world - or only for the U.S.?
I’m your age. I struggled with algebraic when I first converted. Then I used it for awhile. I quickly got past it. I teach many older players (age 50+) who have come back to chess. They voice the same issue you do. Then they find that being positive about it, using it, making the change - all make it quicker and easier. Whether to move past it is a choice on your part. Play practice games and work on the mechanics of writing algebraic. The more you resist it - the more difficult it will be.
I understand the desire for coming back to chess to be simple and fun. I’ve made the same argument on other issues in these forums. Unfortunately, we can’t completely forego things that improve chess experiences for all to make it simpler for a few to return. There needs to be a balance/trade-off.
BTW - one thing I’ve had the good fortune of - is to find some chess books from the 1800’s. They didn’t even use descriptive in the way you think of it. (R to King’s sq. = R-K1 for example.)
My first tournament was in 1986. For about a year prior to that, I studied a book of Boris Spassky’s best games.
The book was in descriptive notation. So, DN is what I learned when I first started playing - and for the first year or so that I played, I used DN for tournaments. I then saw algebraic notation for the first time. It naturally seemed easier to me - each square has a unique name, and each piece has no more than one letter for abbreviation. Whereas it took me a few days to learn how to play through games in the Spassky book, I learned AN in under an hour.
My point is that (a) I did, in fact, “grow up” using DN, and (b) AN seemed much more intuitive and easy to understand - especially once boards were printed with AN coordinates on the sides. I suspect most players had similar experiences.
PS: That Spassky book wasn’t a conscious selection. That book was the only chess book my junior high school library had. At $0.05/day late charge, adjusted for inflation…well, it’s a good thing that school is now closed. But I digress.
Just to try to make sure that there is no misunderstanding here: I imagine that Hartmann and Antonin were aware of the algebraic availability of the three specific books. Antonin was quoting from a review, praising the recent Batsford and Mongoose editions. chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/
I learned how to play chess circa 1970-71. I don’t remember the year, but I remember going to my uncle’s house and playing him. My brother and I also had a set. I don’t remember the board, but the plastic pieces were some type of elaborate design that looked like actual kings, queens, etc. At any rate, I learned to play at some point before Fischer-Spassky. When that tournament took place it was nice, because it seemed to “legitimize” the game for so many people. Guys at my high school [it was an all-boys school] began to seek out the chess club, and our matches would get mentioned during the morning PA announcements.
I last played regularly in 1975, the year I graduated from high school. I played from time to time until perhaps 1980, against a childhood friend. He went into the Army around 1975, and I played against him when he came home on leave. Then he was stationed in Germany, and apparently he played a lot there, because once he came home for good, I could never win or even draw against him. But then again, I don’t remember playing at all while in college.
I did not play at all after 1980. From time to time in the late 1990s I would glance at Chess Life while browsing at the bookstore. I finally bought a copy and read through it in maybe 2013. It was very apparent then that the chess I knew was not the chess that everybody else was playing, at least not as far as notation was concerned.
I did not consider becoming a USCF member and returning to the game (studying and playing chess) until mid-2014. I dug out my little travel set that I’ve had since the 1970s, and tried to play through some games. I joined USCF in October 2014.
What I’m getting at here is that there is a gap of 30+ years between the time I played and studied games regularly until now. It has been, for me, very awkward to make the transition from the type of notation I grew up on and was very comfortable with to what everybody is using now. Without that 30+ year gap, I’m sure algebraic would have felt a lot more intuitive to me.
Yes. I was trying to highlight Hartmann’s statement about the difficulty some players today have understanding old books, because of the descriptive notation.
First, welcome back. It’s good that you’re playing again.
Second, I can understand why that awkwardness exists. To combat it, I recommend going “all-in” with AN, including buying a vinyl board with coordinates to use frequently. If you force yourself to use it exclusively, it will become second nature in short order, I believe. Alternately, as long as you don’t play FIDE-rated events, you could just keep using DN, I suppose.
The percentage and number of TDs that can actually read descriptive notation is declining. Since I still use it myself (I don’t play in FIDE-rated events) I often end up having to resolve issues dealing with a scoresheet done using descriptive.
PS Although it was a little mind-bending, I was able to go through some games where the players had the board (with the numbers and letters for algebraic notation) turned sideways. White’s first move of d4 involved pushing the pawn two squares in front of the king. Black’s first move of Nf3 started an Alekhine.
PPS One of my first boards was printed with descriptive notation on each square, with each square being identified both ways.
