Why algebraic notation?

[Antonin]

@eastside

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.

I’ve considered buying such a board. I’ve seen a lot of nice ones in the USCF store. It would be great if the game boards printed in the magazine had the coordinates along the sides, but there’s probably no demand for such a thing. I really do wonder how many returning players like me just give up and find other things to do with their free time. The last thing I want to do after a day at my very mentally demanding job is to try to crack a frustrating type of game notation before I can even begin to study the ideas behind the moves.

I’m sure some folks are sick of me complaining about game notation, so I’ll just say bye for now.

[lblair]

@Antonin

… 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.

I am reminded of a 2010 passage from Studying Chess Made Easy:

@Andrew Soltis

Let’s face it, getting better at chess is hard. … It takes repetition, memorizing and book study. A LOT of repetition, memorizing and book study.

There’s so much that if your aren’t enjoying yourself, you will become discouraged, frustrated and bored. …
…
… When you get to apply - in a real game - what you’ve learned from a book or computer screen, the information is reinforced in a powerful way.

I can understand if you have a certain feeling of resentment if people tell you what you WILL experience if you do this or that, but I think that you are getting well-intentioned advice. It is certainly POSSIBLE that algebraic notation is a severe obstacle for you specifically, but, since so many others (myself among them) have (after a long time away from the game) made the transition and gone on to be enthusiastically involved in the chess scene, I think it is understandable if people suspect that other factors are at work here. Could your feeling of frustration be, in part, a result of a feeling that the chess world has made a mistake? As I tried to indicate previously ( Subject: Why algebraic notation? ), whatever the merits of the change, there seems to be near zero chance that it will ever be reversed.

I wonder if your frustration is partly a result of the difficulty for many (myself among them) of trying to follow game analysis from a magazine - a difficulty that many of us have, even without trouble with the notation.

@Antonin

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.

This sort of thing was discussed at some length in the thread, Subject: Chess Books , and I wonder if a possibility, mentioned there, would be helpful to you.

@ChessSpawn

… The Everyman Chess Viewer for their ebooks is super. It allows you to play through and read the comments simultaneously for every page of their books. The time saved in setting up positions on a chess board is great. I have their viewer on my android tablet and it is lovely lying in bed in the evening reading and playing through their books.

I do not have any personal experience with ebooks, but my understanding is that they (some of them anyway) enable you to more or less ignore the notation and just click on the moves and see the result on a screen. You can see an example of this sort of thing many places online. For example, theweekinchess.com/john-wats … publishing ).

Like others, I hope that you will try a tournament, but it has to be admitted that there can be many temporary annoyances associated with beginning tournament participation and it isn’t for everyone. Just a few days ago, I saw an interview where Tom Brokaw said that he would like to learn to play chess, but I do not think that he sounded very confident that it would ever actually happen. I think I remember reading that a substantial percentage of USCF members do not participate in tournaments. There is nothing really wrong with you being one of them, even if it is a disappointment for us tournament enthusiasts. I would make more or less the same point as Soltis that tournament involvement can enhance your appreciation of what you read in books and magazines.

@Dan Heisman (April 2013)

… tournament play offers that rich, ‘all-weekend’ chess experience where you congregate with other players, eat and talk chess during meals and in-between games, and benefit from the entire ambiance. …

(By the way, I think that Soltis may have been allowing himself to get too carried away with his reference to “A LOT of repetition, memorizing and book study.” I think that a fair amount of “getting better at chess” can be accomplished with moderate effort. Indeed, Soltis himself, in his book, tries to offer ways to efficiently improve, although I should add that I don’t think that he really describes how to make it “easy” to study chess. Just easier.)

Although it is not the direction that I hope you will go, I want to mention that USCF is currently selling the old descriptive notation, Reinfeld book, Chess by Yourself, uscfsales.com/chess-by-yourself.html , with the sort of contents that you would expect from a book with that title. As I have previously indicated ( Subject: Why algebraic notation? Subject: Why algebraic notation? ), USCF still sells a number of descriptive notation books if that is the sort of thing that you want to read, but my guess is that, if you DO get involved in tournaments, you will, sooner or later, believe that your own progress is held back by not reading some modern (algebraic) works. On the other hand, it has been said:

@tmagchesspgh

Up to a certain level, in my estimation about 1800-1900, a study of the old classics is good enough to get you there. By old classics, I mean Euwe’s, “The Middle Game” and “Judgment and Planning”, Kmoch’s “Pawn Power”, and Pachman’s “Modern Chess Strategy”, great books for the development of middle game planning skills. For the beginner, Tarrasch’s “Game of Chess” is unsurpassed for leaning endgames and tactics. Euwe and Hooper’s, “Chess Endgames” are more than adequate compared to the $35+ tomes offered today. You can even get by with just a knowledge of Fine’s, “Ideas Behind the Chess Openings.”

At about the time a player reaches Class A level, he realizes that these classical books are not enough. Bent Larsen once said that for his own development he found that what Euwe said about chess was all a lie. There was more than logic which needed to be learned. He turned to Nimzovich because Nimzovich covered what was hard about the game, what was paradoxical, the exceptions. The ambitious Class A player must now widen out his view and study much harder material.

I am nowhere near “1800-1900”, and it is an intriguing thought that I myself may have wasted lots of time and money on modern books.

[DHo]

I also have trouble telling my lower case "c"s from "e"s. What I do is use the upper case E.

It usually isn’t a problem, but to prevent lower case "b"s from being confused with a “6” I write the lower case “b” in cursive.

[Edward_D_Collins]

Like many other players who learned chess in the early '70s, I also grew up with descriptive notation.

LONG before I EVER started playing in tournaments, I used to record all of the offhand games I played in descriptive. I still have many old score books with my games in it, all using descriptive notation. (I have to laugh when I play over some of those old games. I’m close to being rated 1900 now, and back then I estimate I was 1200 strength.)

Fortunately, I don’t ever recall having a problem switching to algebraic. I think I realized immediately how logical and simpler it was.

And now, although I do prefer algebraic over descriptive, it’s still very easy for me to read and write in both notations. In fact, now and then just for fun I will record my tournament games in descriptive, especially if I’m playing a young kid. I just love the look to see the look on their face when they ask to borrow my score sheet during the game (which happens more often than you might think) and then realize borrowing it doesn’t help them! Ha ha!

With more than 600 chess books here at home, and hundreds of old Chess Life, Chess Review, and Chess Life and Review magazines, you can probably imagine a good many of them use descriptive. It makes no difference to me. Again, I find I never have a single problem going back and forth with each notation.

Here’s one idea that might help. Make a game of it. Make up a deck of 64 different “playing cards.” Each card will contain the name of each square, in algebraic notation. Shuffle them and hold the deck in your hands, face down. Now turn over each card, one at a time. As you turn over each card, the goal is to find that square on the chessboard in front of you as fast as you can, and to place the card directly on that square. Continue in this manner with all 64 cards. Time yourself each game, and record the results.

The goal will be to consistently get through all 64 cards in 64 seconds or less.

[lblair]

Like many other players who learned chess in the early '70s, I also grew up with descriptive notation.
…
Fortunately, I don’t ever recall having a problem switching to algebraic. …

This WAS about three decades ago, so it is a bit hard to remember, but I think that I did have at least some trouble making the adjustment. I remember having trouble with things like quickly and accurately identifying the g-file. Eventually, though, I did get it.

With more than 600 chess books here at home, and hundreds of old Chess Life, Chess Review, and Chess Life and Review magazines, you can probably imagine a good many of them use descriptive. …

Consequently, one option would be to acquire and learn from descriptive notation books. Although I never finished it, I have fond memories of How to Win at Chess by Horowitz. uscfsales.com/a-complete-che … me-ii.html

Here’s one idea that might help. Make a game of it. Make up a deck of 64 different “playing cards.” Each card will contain the name of each square, in algebraic notation. Shuffle them and hold the deck in your hands, face down. Now turn over each card, one at a time. As you turn over each card, the goal is to find that square on the chessboard in front of you as fast as you can, and to place the card directly on that square. Continue in this manner with all 64 cards. Time yourself each game, and record the results.
…

I suspect that it would be more fun to practice algebraic notation by using some (relatively) light reading - something with not too many variations in the text. Perhaps Simple Attacking Plans by Fred Wilson would be worth a try. uscfsales.com/simple-attacking-plans.html

@Michael McGuerty (about two years ago)

… an ideal book for a beginner or casual player who wants to become acquainted with some standard attacking motifs. It is a collection of thirty-seven conversationally annotated miniature games that reinforce Wilson’s four essential concepts for successful attacks …

[arthur_holmer]

Like many other players, I grew up on descriptive. I switched to algebraic during the 1980’s and have used it regularly. I have not given it much thought as I was sure I made less mistakes in algebraic.

However, I recently purchased the Chess Life/Chess Review/Chess Life and Review four DVD set from USCFsales and I found that all of the 500 or so issues from 1933-1975 are in descriptive. Initially it was like having to re-learn that foreign language you took in high school. But, if you wanted to read the issues, well, you had to use descriptive. Actually, it did not take long to learn to read the game scores in descriptive. Also, I am now convinced that descriptive is actually a very good notation. Who knew?

By the way, the DVD set is a fantastic bargain. It is a chess time machine right on your computer.

Arthur Holmer

[David_Ames]

@Antonin

One of the things I’ve had trouble getting used to as I’ve returned to chess is algebraic notation. I learned the game about a year before Fischer vs Spassky, and all of the books I bought in the years immediately after that used descriptive notation. It’s a type of notation that I’ve very comfortable with.

But these days, every game I’ve seen published is in algebraic notation. To me, it’s not very intuitive at all, and I have trouble following games. I always find myself counting off a-b-c-d-e, rather than paying attention to the concepts underlying various moves.

When did everything change over to algebraic? Why? I’ve read that it is a more precise way to record moves, but to me it is merely “centric” to whichever person is playing white.

I suppose I will eventually get used to it, but for now it feels like something was fixed that was not broken.

Our British friends not only had to switch to algebraic notation, but also switch from pounds, shillings, pence to decimal notation.
Can you imagine what to do with a price of 3 gn.?

[bnolan]

When I was growing up, my first chess books were in descriptive notation, so that is my first language.

I also had a Fidelity Chess Challenger 7 chess computer that required you to punch in the moves using the algebraic coordinates. E2-E4 for example.

This meant that when I got my first algebraic book, I had no trouble reading it. I was already fluent in algebraic coordinates.

During my first tournaments, I used descriptive notation. It just seemed more formal for such a serious setting. Then I read the rule book and found out that a mistake of just one character did not invalidate the notation of that move from being used for draw or time forfeit claims. Since Algebraic used fewer characters, I figured I would switch as a practical matter. This was around the mid 80s.

[GeneM]

The destination square is not the only square that deserves to be notated.

It helped me when I switched notating my games from SAN (Short Algebraic Notation) to any kind of richer algebraic scheme that also included sufficient info to identify the origin square:

• My rate of notation errors dropped to near zero, because when I made an error notating the first square, the act of notating the second square alerted me to reality.

• And when a rare mistake does survive on paper during the game, I have always been able to figure the proper correction later at home, due to the helpfulness of the additional info of origin square.

For the goal of notating both squares, origin and destination,…
LAN (Long Algebraic Notation) identifies both squares, origin and destination. But LAN is a poor design for the human eye because it physically separates the two most important chunks of info - namely:

• The type of piece that moved.
• The destination square.

I use another notation that encode both origin and destination, but not LAN.

“Algebraic” is a misnomer. “Coordinate” would have been more accurate, but less helpful for pronounce-able acronyms like SAN.

It is unfortunate that Black moves are not numbered in the conventions of chess notation. White’s moves should be all the odd numbers, 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 etc, and Black’s should be 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 etc.
Game scores of moves could still be presented with the numeric ID of most Black moves omitted:

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 d6
3. Bc4 Nf6
   (and so on, with the occasional explicit numbering of a Black move like 12. Rfe8).

Which is the better use of bolding:

(Option A: Bold only the move-pair ID numbers.)
1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4 d6 4. Nf3 g6 5. Bc4 Nb6 6. Bb3 Bg7 7. Ng5 d5 8. f4 f6 9. Nf3 Nc6 10. c3 Bg4 11. Be3 Qd7 12. Nbd2 O-O-O 13. h3 1/2-1/2

(Option B: Bold only the moves.

1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4 d6 4. Nf3 g6 5. Bc4 Nb6 6. Bb3 Bg7 7. Ng5 d5 8. f4 f6 9. Nf3 Nc6 10. c3 Bg4 11. Be3 Qd7 12. Nbd2 O-O-O 13. h3 1/2-1/2

(C: The usual in Chess Life and books, which is to bold all the numbers and moves.)
1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4 d6 4. Nf3 g6 5. Bc4 Nb6 6. Bb3 Bg7 7. Ng5 d5 8. f4 f6 9. Nf3 Nc6 10. c3 Bg4 11. Be3 Qd7 12. Nbd2 O-O-O 13. h3 1/2-1/2

For me personally when I started experimenting with these years ago, I liked option ‘A’ immediately.
Eventually I decided I like ‘B’ too, but only after I got used to it.

I feel that ‘C’ is the worst of these options. I get that they do it so that analysis moves can be distinguished by being nonbolded. Option ‘A’ can distinguish analysis moves by nonbolding their move-pair numbers, combined with italicizing if necessary.

Best of all would be to stop presenting moves in paragraph format, and instead use the table format with three-aligned-columns (number, white, black).

---

In Bruce Alberston’s algebraic update of Fred Reinfeld’s classic - “1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations” shot puzzle book, in the answer section the table format was replaced by the paragraph format - yuk.

Worse, almost all of the approximately 100 flawed puzzles were left unfixed - unreplaced - uncut - even untagged.

Also bad is that apparently little thought was put into the design of the KINDLE ebook version. This ebook is service-able, but harder to use than it should be.
In stark contrast, John Nunn clearly “gets it” with the design of his Kindle ebook version of his - “1001 Deadly Checkmates”.
Both puzzle ebooks would be much better in the “dynamic” ebook format of ForwardChess.com (or any similar dynamic ebook with all the features including an engine etc).
.