📝 Reading and saying moves

Chess moves are written down, and written the same way everywhere. That's why you can open a Russian book from 1950 and follow the whole game without knowing a word of Russian.

The board is a named grid: files are letters, a to h starting from White's left; ranks are numbers, 1 to 8 starting from the bottom. Every square is its letter and its number: e4, f7, a1. Look at the edges of the board — they're written right there.

Pieces are abbreviated with a capital letter: R for rook, N for knight (the K is already taken by the king), B for bishop, Q for queen, K for king. Pawns get no letter at all — they're named by the square alone.

So you say it out loud — “knight f three” — and the move list writes it as “Nf3”. Exactly the same move. Let's read them one at a time.