Descriptive notation abbreviated to the first letter of its name: K for king, Q for queen, R for rook, B for bishop, P for pawn. Knight begins with the same letter as king, so it is abbreviated to either "Kt" (used in older chess literature) or "N". "N" is used in this article. In 1944 "Chess Review" received many letters debating the change from Kt to N . In descriptive notation each square has two names, depending on Black's or White's viewpoint. Each is given a name corresponding with the piece that occupies the first at the start of the game. Thus
Algebraic notation (chess) Philipp Stamma. Stamma used the modern names of the squares, but he used "p" for pawn moves and the original of a piece ("a" through "h") instead of the initial letter of the piece name. This article describes standard algebraic notation (SAN) required by FIDE. Each square of the chessboard is identified by a unique coordinate pair—a letter and a number. The vertical columns of squares, called ', are labeled "a" through "h" from White's left (the ) to right (the ). The horizontal rows of squares, called ', are numbered "1" to "8" starting from White's side of the