PGN Notation

Portable Game Notation is the standard for Chess game scores on the Net, and facilitates automatic indexing and replaying by a wide variety of computer programmes and indexing facilities. It is, in particular, the standard required by Mark Crowther's This Week in Chess. It is also the standard required by indexing scripts running on this Chess site.

PGN specifies formats for the headers and for the text of game scores. In submitting games to the Victorian Chess Pages, please adhere to the following rules:

Headers

Each game should have a number of header categories, each on a separate line. These take the form:
[Category "Text of category"]

Some common categories are (in normal order of appearance):

Event
The tournament or other event the game was played at.
Site
The (real or cyber-) location this tournament was held at.
Date
The date the game was played on.
Round
The round of the tournament it was played in.
White
The name of the white player, in "First-Name, Last-Name" form.
Black
The name of the black player.
Result
"1-0", "0-1", "1/2-1/2".
ECO
The Encyclopedia of Chess Openings code for the opening.
There are probably others that I'm not aware of, but these are the main ones. If any are unknown, they can be omitted or filled in with question marks.

Body of score

Moves should be recorded in algebraic, not descriptive, notation (i.e. the French Defence starts 1. e4 e6, not 1. P-K4, P-K3). You may place periods after the move numbers, but should not place commas between White's and Black's moves. Check is shown by +. Captures are shown with x, including pawn captures (i.e. write bxc3, not simply bc). Show the result at the end with a simple 1-0, 0-1, or 1/2-1/2. There is probably a standard for comments, but I don't yet know what it is :). (Feel free to email it to me if you do.)

Example

The following is an example game written in PGN format, drawn from the 1955 Moscow Championship (apparently it indicates something about the Alekhine-Chatard Attack (1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5 Be7 5. e5 Nd7 6. h4!?)).

[Event "Ch Moscow"]
[Site "Moscow (Russia)"]
[Date "1955.??.??"]
[Round "6"]
[White "Lilienthal Andre"]
[Black "Ravinsky Grigory"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "C13"]

1. d4 e6 2. e4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5 Be7 5. e5 Nfd7 6. h4 a6 7. Qh5 c5 8. dxc5 Nc6 9. f4 Nxc5 10. Bxe7 Nxe7 11. Bd3 d4 12. Ne4 Nxe4 13. Bxe4 Qa5+ 14. Ke2 Bd7 15. Qg5 Bb5+ 16. Kd1 d3 17. cxd3 Qa4+ 18. Ke1 Rd8 19. Rd1 Bc6 20. Qxg7 Qb4+ 21. Rd2 Rg8 22. Bxc6+ bxc6 23. Qxh7 Qxf4 24. Nf3 Qe3+ 25. Kd1 Rxg2 26. Qe4 Rxd2+ 27. Nxd2 Qxd3 28. Qxd3 Rxd3 29. Kc2 Rd4 30. h5 Kf8 31. Nf3 Rg4 32. h6 Kg8 33. Rh5 Ng6 1/2-1/2

Victorian Chess Pages.

Last modified 28/5/96.