Chess writing symbols

So in some old books i have seen the following symbols for writing a game.

1P-K4 P-K4 etc.

This type o writing can been seen in Bobby Fischer's books and i cannot undersand it completely. Why is Black's first move the same as White's?

If someone knows this symbols could he explain then to me?

Thanks in advance.

       Old books have some mistakes. When using algebraic notation, each square has 2 names. One from white's perspective, the other from black. It should be P-K4, ...P-K5

oh get it thanks

but what about Kt-QB3?

     What about it??

I meant what was it meaning

i didn't really knew how it was called but now thar Mitch posted its name i will be able to learn it. Well it was used before i was born so... for me it's kinda old.

Anyway thanks a lot guys!

the hard part is keeping track of which knight is which.

Hi GreekFreakNation--that's correct as shown because descriptive notation is relative to the side of the board making the move.  White's K4 is the fourth square up from where his king begins, or e4.  Whereas black's K4 is the fourth square up from his own king's starting place, hence e5.  So P-K4 is the equivalent of e4 for white and e5 for black in the algebraic system.

         It means the knight closest to the queen will move to the 3rd square, in front of the bishop, on th queen side.

In descriptive notation, the rank is numbered 1-8 from each player's point of view.  For each player, the closest rank is rank 1, and the farthest rank is rank 8.

'1.P-K4 P-K4" is not a typo.  It means the same as "1.e4 e5".  From black's point of view, the black pawn is on the 4th rank.

I was expecting Knight to be symbolized with N as it is referred to in wikipedia.

Thanks pentiumjs and TurboFish for the clarification.

In the descriptive notation you use the name of the piece which starts on the file instead of a letter of the file. A game could start. 1. P-K4 which means pawn to king (the e-file) four (whites fourth rank). Then black answers 1...P-K4 which means Pawn to king four (blacks fourth rank!). 2. N-KB3 N-QB3 means N to kings bishop 3 (Nf3) and N to queens bishop 3 (Nc6). On the third move white could play 3.B-N5 because it isn't necesary to write QN5 because Bg5 isn't a legal move.

This notation is complicated and old but I hope I could help.

You did GMVillads! Although i haven't read much from the book yet since it takes some time to get used to it, but you guys made it much easier for me

A helpful hint from a life-long user of DN--turn the knights inward so they face the k and q; the right knight (KN) will look left, the left knight (QN) will look right.  You use this devise to differentiate between the KN and QN, so when the move is KNxP, you will easily know which knight and you won't have to scream at the book like I did.  Also, for white, the LSB is the KB, the DSB the QB, and that for black it is the opposite.  So, when white plays KBxN, it's no longer an ambiguous move.  I love DN.

The KKt/QKt and KR/QR form usually only appears in the opening phase. Later in the game notation like N/3-N5 or R/B-Q1 is used for clarity.

A poorly-played sample: 1. P-K4 P-QB4 2. N-KB3 N-QB3 3. P-Q4 PxP 4. NxP N-B3 5. N-QB3 P-K4 6. KN-N5* P-KN4 7. B-QB4 P-QR3 8. N-R3 P-QN4 9. QBxP** P-R3 10. BxRP P-N5 11. B-QB1 PxN/B***

Translated: 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 e5 6. Ndb5 g5 7. Bc4 a6 8. Na3 b5 9. Bxg5 h6 10. Bxh6 b4 11. Bc1 bxc3.

*Move 6: (Ndb5) KN-N5 is given as it is the opening, and still fairly clear which knight is which. A more general way to write it is N/4-N5.
**Move 8: (...Bxg5) QBxP is one way to notate it. However, also note that BxKNP is alright too. That is also used if, say a white bishop was on e3, and black pawns on b6 and g5, and Bxg5 was played.
***Move 10: (...bxc3) PxN/B is used to denote the knight captured was on the QB-file. Likewise, if white played 9. Naxb5 instead, that would be 9. N/RxP.

DN is not as tricky as it seems, once you get used to "flipping the board" for white and black and learning each square has 2 names (e.g. c4 = wQB4 = bQB5). It's fairly intuitive, compared to xiangqi notation. Be glad that it is.