Читать книгу Chess and Checkers : the Way to Mastership - Edward Lasker - Страница 6

The white Queen must be on the white square and the black Queen on the black square. These eight, men are commonly known as "pieces" in distinction from the Pawns. The latter occupy the line of squares immediately in front of the Pieces.

The lines of squares now occupied by the men and the other four vacant horizontal lines between them are called RANKS. The vertical lines of squares running perpendicularly to the ranks are called FILES. The oblique lines of squares, that is, lines which connect squares of the same color, are called DIAGONALS.

To describe the moves of the men on the board in a simple way it is necessary to indicate every square and every man by a short symbol. For this purpose different systems have been suggested at different times, but only two of them have been generally adopted. The older one, called the "descriptive notation," still predominates in the English, French and Spanish speaking countries, but as leading English and American writers have lately used the newer "algebraic notation" which is much more simple, the latter will be employed in this book. Later the former method will be explained for the sake of completeness.

In the algebraic notation the files are lettered from a to h, starting from the file on White's left. The ranks are numbered from 1 to 8, starting from the rank on which White's pieces stand at the beginning of the game. Each square is now easily indicated by naming the file and rank at which it forms the intersection. The Rook in Diagram 2, for instance, stands on e4, the Bishop on C4, the Pawns on h4 and g7, the Knight on f7, the Queen on d6 and the Kings on c1 and g3.

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8 | | | | | | | | |

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7 | | | | | | ^Kt| #P | |

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6 | | | | #Q | | | | |

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5 | | | | | | | | |

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4 | | | #B | | ^R | | | ^P |

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3 | | | | | | | #K | |

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2 | | | | | | | | |

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1 | | | ^K | | | | | |

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a b c d e f g h