Child Chess Notation Printable
This post comes from my husband, Jake, who currently stays at home with our 3 children. He is a fantastic dad, and the kids are so blessed to be able to spend so much time with him these days! At the beginning of the “school” year, Jake began teaching Asante, our oldest, how to play chess. As sometimes happens, Asante got hooked, and what started out as a way to spend a couple hard-to-get-through hours in the afternoon became an obsession.
I have a young chess player. He is a good chess player, but he is still young. It takes significant effort for him to record his games. Some adults forget the cognitive and physical effort it takes for children to write just a few letters. In the August 2012 edition of Chess Life for Kids, a chess coach lamented over his many players who felt taking notation “distracts them.” National Master Daniel Gurevich gave a nice top ten for why it is valuable to notate, but didn’t address that “especially for primary and elementary kids,” it may actually be distracting. I created this sheet to alleviate some of that difficulty and distraction.
The United State Chess Federation rules allow the Tournament Director to accommodate score sheet recording for those with reasonable need. I see no reason why this version of a score sheet would not be allowed as a useful alternative to either not having the game recorded or having the game recorded by a proctor. I plan to introduce it at my son’s next tournament.
To use this sheet, the child will still need to be able to name the squares. Each square belongs to a rank and file. Ranks (horizontals) are numbered and files (verticles) are lettered. You can youtube or Wikipedia search “algebraic chess notation” if you don’t know how it works. You can find an example game in algebraic notation and the corresponding child notation here. And finally, the notation in action [2:33].
Hope this resource is helpful to all of you who have young chess players who want to record their games, but are bogged down by the tedium of it!
This looks really cool. My son is still a ways from playing a real game (having just turned three), but he's been very interested in chess for a year now, so I hope we'll be using this someday.
"I plan to introduce it at my son’s next tournament."
Was it welcomed by the tournament director ? Have other children handle it as well as your son ? Do you think the score sheet could be modified to be more effective ?
Hi Galago,
Thanks for the note! It was welcomed by the director. In fact, we have had a few chess tournament directors ask if they could use it in their tournaments for younger players. It is a pain for many chess coaches to get their young players to notate at all, so they felt like with this they had a better chance. We haven't gotten a ton of feedback on it though. Great questions! Do you have a young player? If so, try it out and let us know what you think! Thanks again for stopping by!
I am having trouble finding the file? I was hoping to use it for a chess tournament tomorrow for my 5 year old. Am I missing something or is the file unavailable?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/123291094/Chess-Notation-for-Children
It’s GREAT! Thank you!!!
I ll teach my sons . Thas very good .