Chess notation is universal way of describing moves on a chessboard. Chess notation turns the chessboard into a grid of numbers and letters. Using the grid it is possible to record games. The grid is read where the letters are on the sides that the pieces start on reading a b c d e f g h from left to right. The numbers, running across the left and right sides start with one on the white side and ends with 8 on the black side.  When reading or writing chess notation each piece has it’s own abbreviation. They are:

-         King- K

-         Queen- Q

-         Bishop- B

-         Knight- N

-         Rook- R

-         When recording the pawn you leave the piece identification blank

When recording the move of a piece you first record the identification of the piece. If you moved the rook for example you would record R. Next to the letter you record the column that the piece moved into. For example if the rook moved into column d it would look like Rd. The last part of the recording is the the row that the piece moved into. So, altogether the move would be Rd1 or read out to be as rook to d 1 which is where the white queen starts out on the board. When writing down a move where a piece has been captured you put an x between the piece identification and column the piece moved into so the recording would look like Rxd1. When recording a check you write + and when recording a checkmate you write ++. A king side castle is recorded as 0-0 and a queen side castle is recorded as 0-0-0.