Chess sets, (cc att.) Free Chess Lessons

The game below is used to show the Short Algebraic Notation in combination with the Chess Notation symbols. The game in itself may be illustrative, but the main goal is an exercise with this notation. Do you know al the symbols used?

Chess game in Wrocław at Old Market by Kamil Porembiński

There are a lot of chess annotation symbols, but they are certainly not all that important. We already have seen the 1-0, 0-1 and 1/2-1/2 indications at the end of the game. Sometimes an asterisk (*) is used to indicate that the game isn't finished.

This post focusses on the chess symbols that are added at the end of a move. An overview of these symbols can be found in the following table. I distinguish the symbols that have to be used in the algebraic chess notation to indicate the move itself and the symbols that are used to indicate the quality of the move or to indicate an evaluation of the current position.

To indicate the move itself
Symbol	Meaning
#	Checkmate
+	Check
++	Double check. Sometimes this symbol is used to indicate checkmate, but most of the time it is used to indicate that two pieces are checkmating the king at the same time.
To indicate the quality of the move
!	A good move, not trivial.
!!	An excellent move, even more difficult to see.
?	A bad move
??	A blunder, a very bad move
!?	An interesting move, probably it will be good
?!	A dubious move, probably very risky
To indicate the current position
=	Equal
+=	Evaluating the position as a small advantage for White. White stands slightly better
=+	A small advantage for Black
+/-	A clear advantage for White
-/+	A clear advantage for Black
+-	A winning advantage for White
-+	A winning advantage for Black
?	Unclear

Chess by Jens Gyldenkærne Clausen

All sizes of this photo as well as of the uncropped version are available for download on Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

In practice the long algebraic notation is only used by players learning the game. Most of the time chess players use the short algebraic notation.
This is almost the same notation, but with the starting position and the hyphen left out.

But now some moves have to be disambiguated. If two (or more) identical pieces can move to the same square, the letter indicating the piece is followed by (in descending order of preference):

• the file of departure if they differ
• the rank of departure if the files are the same but the ranks differ
• both the file and rank if neither alone uniquely defines the piece

The Fool’s Mate now can be notated as:

1.f3 e5 2.g4 Qh4# 0-1