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The Chess Men |
A game of chess contains two opposing armies each consisting of 16 chessmen. Each army has 8 'pieces' and 8 'pawns'. The Pieces are:
The 8 Pawns are initially arranged on the 2nd rank (for White), in front of the Pieces. The diagram to the left illustrates the starting positions for each of the chessmen. Note that the Queen stands on a square of her own colour, on the same file as the opposing Queen. |
Chess Notation |
The GD.c site uses the most common form of chess notation - Algebraic. There are other forms of notation such as English Descriptive and long and short forms of Algebraic notation, however here we will only cover the standard Algebraic form. With Algebraic notation, each square of can be described by an one alphabetic character (a to h) and one digit (1 to 8). For example, the starting position for the White Queen is d1; the Black Queen begins her game on d8. Pieces are defined by the following characters:
Pawns do not have a character assigned. A move is noted as the piece character followed by the destination square of the move. For example, moving the White Knight on square b1 to c3 would be detailed as: Nc3. Moving the White Queen's pawn be noted as: d3 (note that there is no defining alphabetic character for the movement of a pawn). If the destination square is occupied by the opposition, a capture takes place. The capture is illustrated by the inclusion of an 'x' between the defining alphabetic character and the destination square. For example, a Knight moving to the f6 square and capturing a piece would be noted as: Nxf6. A pawn making a capture would be noted with the originating file of the pawn. For example, a Black pawn on the d-file capturing a White pawn at e6 would be noted as: dxe6. Other notation symbols are:
Observations can also be added :
Next step is to understand the way each piece and the pawns can move. Please select your next page from the menu at the top of this page. |