Many different chess books, chess websites, and other types of chess training methods rely on you understanding chess notation. Chess notation helps to standardize how moves are recorded and how a game progressed. Let us look at how chess notation identifies the different squares on the board.

Your ranks are numbered from the white side of the chessboard to the black side. The back row with the white queen, not the one with the pawns, is considered rank 1. The white pawns are on rank 2 and so forth. This means that blacks pawns are on rank 7 and blacks primary pieces are on rank 8. The files, or vertical rows are lettered A through H. The first file letter is A, which will be the furthest left hand file for the player playing white, if you are playing black the A file will be the file furthest to your right. Think of the chess squares as having a first and last name such as A1 or B7 with the letter being the first name and the number being the last name.

By doing this type of labeling, or chess notation, we can track the moves of all the chess pieces and the orders in which the moves are made. To notate your chess game you must write down where the piece was and where it is moved to each turn. If we were to move the white pawn in front of the white king two spaces ahead, the move would read e2 – e4. The hyphen means the word “to”. This signifies that whatever chess piece was on e2 now has moved to e4. This system of chess notation is probably the easiest to understand for most people.