Old notation

There was a time, hundreds of years ago, when lnstead of 1. e4 you would have said:

"Sally the first - the King's Own Pawn advances to the fourth house".

How Delightful! Certainly add a bit of pizzazz to my games Even when I lose, I'll sound great.

The two things to remember are the following:

(1) The rank numbers are relative rather than absolute, so that white's fourth rank is black's fifth rank, rather than both being the fourth rank in the modern system.

(2) The system works on the basis of files that are named for the pieces on the first rank which are, going left to right for white (obviously right to lef for black), as follows: KR, KN, KB K, Q, QB, QN, QR. Sometimes if there is no ambiguity you don't need the K for King or the Q for Queen in front of B, N, or R.

So say, for example, black goes in modern notation g6, which in descriptive notation would be P-KN3 (Pawn to King's Knight 3). Taking P-KN3 bit by bit, first is the piece you move including pawns, hence P in this example; then - to mean 'moves'; then KN for King's Knight; and finally 3 for black's third rank - voila! P-KN3. Captures is X of course, where needed.

so I know nothing about chess, but I know someone who’s doing a sort of history project about a local highschool (in america if that changes anything) and in the 1963-64 yearbook the chess club put this as their description. (Sorry if the formatting is weird, I’m on mobile) I was wondering if anyone could help me figure this out.

1 Q-N1 K-R7 9 Q-N3ch K-B8

2 Q-R7ch K-N6 10 Q-B3ch K-N8

3. Q-N6 ch K-N6 11 K-Q2 K-R7

4 Q-R5ch K-N6 12 Q-B2 K-R8

5 Q-N5ch K-N7 13 Q-R4ch K-N8

6 Q-R4ch K-N8 14 K-B3 K-B8

7 K-K3 K-B8 15 Q-B2 mate

8 Q-QB4ch K-Q8

and then beside this was:

_x_x_xKx

x_x_x_x_
_x_x_x_x

x_x_x_x_

_x_x_Q_x

Q_x_x_x_
_P_x_x_x

x_x_x_x_

We asked a chess player and all they could tell us was that it was the old type of notation. I was wondering if this was some puzzle to fill in the blanks or just a record of a good game that they wanted to put in their description. I do have a picture of it but I don’t think I can post pictures here. I would try to figure it out myself but again, I don’t know much about chess, let alone chess notation from the 60s.

Think of it as learning a new language to describe what you already know. I still write P- K4 on my score sheets then switch to algebraic.

It's called descriptive notation, and it was used before coordinate or algebraic. I know a little bit how to read it, although barely. I'm not sure if I'd be able to help, I tried looking for a converter but there seems to be none that works. I am not at all familiar with the "_x_x_xKx" etc. so I apologize. I do know how to read the descriptive notation, although it would take time that I do not currently have. You can look up a board with named notation like the one below. Read the notation as the piece is named first, then where it lands. Two parts, the file of which starting piece it lands on and the rank it lands on. An example would be:

1. P-KB4 P-K4 White moves a pawn on the King Bishop "KB" file to the 4th square.

This website could help you understand/convert it if you had the time.

@tlok_bolin

@tlok_bolin

Thank you, I’ll try to look into this more. Thanks for your help!

No problem, I tried. Very sorry that I cannot convert anything as of right now. I know it's a lot for a person who isn't interested in chess, but I hope I helped enough

It’s not confusing. u are imbecile