With chess you can keep track of every game you play. Secret reason why you should keep score. You can show-off your wins or understand your losses. This is called keeping score, or chess notation. Every square has a name: a first name and a last name. The first name is a letter and the last name is a number. The person with the White pieces always reads the letters from left to right starting with "a" and the numbers go up the board starting with "1." The person with the Black pieces sees everything opposite.

Look on the side of any real chessboard and you will find these letters and numbers.

Every square has a name, and every piece (except the pawn) has a symbol. If there is no symbol, you know it must be a pawn.

King = K : Queen = Q : Rook = R : Bishop = B : Knight = N :
Pawn = has no symbol.

White plays pawn to g4
and Black wins with Queen to h4

The game on to the left is the shortest checkmate possible in chess. This game would be written as it is below.

The "#" symbol means that it is checkmate.

If you were to capture someone you would write an "x". For example Q (Queen) x (captures) f7 (the f7 square). In short that is Qxf7. If you were to check it would be, for example, Qc4+. If you castle on the Kingside you write "0-0". Castling on the Queenside you write "0-0-0".

If you'd like to have a free score sheet to print out, please click here.

HINT: Keeping score is the best way to get better at chess. You can show off your brilliant wins to your friends and keep track of the games you lose so you can understand what went wrong.