Chess Game Introduction

Chess mechanism are restrictive in the way each different type of available pieces in the game can move.

Piece Movements

Special Moves

Game Finishing Condition

• Checkmate (Win/Lose)

• Threefold repetition (Draw)

• Fivefold repetition (Draw)

• 50 moves rule (Draw)

• 75 moves rule (Draw)

• Stalemate (Draw)

• Insufficient Materials (Draw)

FEN(Forsyth-Edwards Notation)

FEN String being a line of text that use to describe :

1) Current board position.

2) The player currently taking the turn. (w being as white and b as black)

3) Castling availability (One of the Special Moves)

4) En-Passant availability (One of the Special Moves)

5) Half move count, it is use for recording the condition for which fifty-moves rules (Game Finishing Condition) will be triggered.

6) Full moved count, it increment by one after black had made their move, the higher the count, the more moves had been made and total time taken or player exhaustion is imaginable from this number alone.

The opening FEN for a chess game is always stated as below, for each white space divided them up for corresponding sections as described above.

rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1

Detail explanation

The board position of FEN (In the case above, rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR), for each of the slash splits the whole line into 8 individual split that corresponding to each of the row on the chess board, for the most left part of the split be the last row while most right part be the first row.

Zooming into each of the already split line describes the type of pieces if any on each of the column of the row, see the alphabetic and numerical description below for what each letters meant. The only special case are when numerical letter shows up as part of the empty column of the row which can be sum up until the end of the column or reaching column with piece.

The classic way of describing pieces :

Capital letters being white in color while small letter are meant for black color.

p - pawn

n - knight

b - bishop

r - rook

q - queen

k - king

numerical - total consecutive empty column of a row, starting from the empty column that have yet to be taken into account.

Algebraic Notation

It contains the move description from a board position, with this, a move from current board position that will form the next board position will happen.

Rules :

1) You have absolute information on which color are moving.

2) You have absolute information of the current board position.

Quick Knowledge :

1) Except for pawn and castling, the description of algebraic notation will starts with a single capital alphabetic letter describing the piece that are taking the action. To know if that's a pawn that is making the move, it just starts with nothing that describe the piece.

2) To made these algebraic notation as short as possible, unnecessary and irrelevant information are excluded. For example, to know from which square a piece are moving to and from, the square identity of chess board are being used but we doesn't need to know where the piece are moving from since there can be one exact location the piece can land to, so, if we are talking about knight moving to d2 and we know exactly the board position and which color are moving, we know only white knight in b1 could do that, thereby Nd2 is the minimum form of algebraic notation needed.

There are times when there are multiple of the same type of pieces that can reach the same square, this is called disambiguating move where human brain are on their great use in this case. How would we know if there are two rook with one on column h and another on column a that which are moving to square e1 with Re1 notation. Well, we see though future like seeing through a crystal ball, we look for future notation containing a clue to the current notation, in this case, for something like Ra5. That indicate rook at column a will be making a move to row 5 which rook at column h couldn't have possibly done it. Thereby, the current algebraic notation Re1 are meant for rook at column h. But what if there isn't any future algebraic notation? Well, we guess, flip the coin. Hmm, we wanted to save the trouble that would have caused us when having an extra alphabetic letter on the algebraic notation right? Like increasing the size of text files, having needing to type one more words, the risk of unbeautified notation etc. That's absolutely nonsense. Yes, I was joking, please forgive me. An algebraic notation will give you exactly 100% of the clue as of which piece are moving to where. I swear this will be the only joke, let's get serious shall we?

In the case of disambiguating move, minimum form of algebraic notation need to be more specific by including the column or row identity the piece that are moving from, only either of them are needed depends on if the overlapping pieces are of the same column or row. Rha5 instead of Ra5 in this example.

3) If there's ever a "x" alphabet in the notation, it meant capture is included, either destination piece for most cases except en-passant which we will definitely know it's location for we know our board position.

4) Castling doesn't relate to anything described here instead of O-O for kingside castling while O-O-O for queenside castling, be it zero or orange, the shape of circle and hyphen in between should be fine. To ease remembering, each O represent the number of squares rook moved from castling.

5) For pawn promotion, after destination description, an equal sign will be included followed by the promoting piece type in capital letter, for example, a8=Q.

6) A plus(+) sign will be added to the end of the notation for each checking pieces by the opponent.

7) # sign are added to the end of notation signifying checkmate.

8) The result of game, when a game has ended, are marked with 0-1 as black won, 1-0 as white won while 1/2-½ as draw.

With all of these algebraic notations, a game match can go though the brain without needing anything at all. But, since such superhuman are super niche, most human needs computer aid to see through what's happening such as GUIs, this asset, The Coolest Chess is certainly what you need.