If there was no way to record a game of chess then all chess web sites would read something like this as taken from above:

"Saunders of Toronto also lost a point, being defeated by Flack of Kingston, who adopted the French defence, and by the opportune advance of a pawn on his sixteenth move won the exchange.

This reverse seemed to unnerve the Toronto player, for he shortly afterwards lost his rook, then the queen and the game."

How does one kibitz to that and if so what would it read like.

"White should have resigned when he lost his Rook."

"Reports state that Flack often adopted the French Defence. The advance of the pawn on move 16 sounds like it was all book."

"Saunders is a mere chess tourist, he is always getting unnerved when the exchange down."

"Go Flack!"

The final table of this tournament.

http://chess.ca/canadian-championsh...

Scroll down to the 24th Canadian Championship.

In several days, I will transcribe the following games from Montreal 1899:

Saunders-Flack, Eighth Round, French Defense, "23. . . . B tks P ch.," 0-1.

Short-Goldstein, Ninth Round, Ruy Lopez, "29. K to Kt 3," 1-0.

Sanders [sic] - Smith, Twelfth (Final) Round, Scotch Game, "26. R tks R," 0-1.

Short-Davies, Twelfth (Final) Round, Ruy Lopez, "28. B to K 6 ch." (N.B.: Black's final move not clearly legible, must be checked), 0-1.

Snellgrove-Flack, Twelfth (Final) Round, Bird's Opening, "30. Q tks Q ch.," 1-0.

I've already transcribed Bolster-Stewart, Second Round, Giuoco Piano, "15. . . . Qe3," 0-1, and Stewart-Goldstein, Eighth Round, Ruy Lopez, "28. Bb6," 1-0.

Once I've transcribed the games, and I've double-checked the game-scores as transcribed into algebraic notation, I will prepare PGN headers and moves and submit them for upload.

"A HARD FOUGHT GAME"

"The centre of attraction all through the evening was the game between Goldstein and Smith. The later [sic] opened with the Ruy Lopez, and for some time the position was even, but on the middle game Goldstein came out of a wholesale exchange of pieces a pawn to the good. It was a doubled pawn, and the advantage was not an easy one to make use of, but by the steady advance of his pawns and the careful manipulation of knight and bishop Goldstein gradually forced his opponent into a very difficult position, in which Smith defended himself with great skill. Eventually it resolved itself into an ending of bishop and two pawns against knight and two pawns, but Goldstein had a pawn nearer queen, and pushed it to victory. After a severe struggle lasting to 80 or 90 moves, Smith resigned shortly after midnight. Goldstein is a member of the Cercle St. Denis Club, and his hard won victory was hailed with loud applause."

"SMITH WINS FIRST PRIZE"

"Saunders played the Scotch game against Smith, and by sacrificing the exchange on his twelfth move got up a lively attack, but it proved to be not quite good enough, for the Manitoba champion defended himself with his usual care, forcing an exchange of queens, which compelled Saunders to resign about ten moves later."

* * *

"The meeting closed with the presentation of the prizes. Mr. Smith received a handsome case of silver fruit knives and forks, Mr. Goldstein a gold medal, Mr. Flack a case of carvers, Mr. Davies a gold medal, Messrs. Saunders and Short, each a chess board and men, Mr. Snellgrove a case of spoons. The brilliancy prize, offered by Mr. Richard White, managing director of The Gazette, was awarded to Mr. Stewart, who received a hearty round of applause for his clever play without sight of the moves."

Brilliant.

"In several days, I will transcribe the following games from Montreal 1899."

I cannot wait several days. I'm now like a kid on Christmas Eve watching the minutes slowly drag by.

Please post the bare score. Stick in my private forum thingy thing.

Please....

Prizes:

" Mr. Smith received a handsome case of silver fruit knives and forks."

"Mr. Snellgrove a case of spoons."

I came 2nd in a minor tournament in Dortmund in 1970. I won a flask! and also the best game which was a round of applause. Not a "hearty round of applause." just a normal round of applause.

I could have won the thing (and got a bigger flask.) but I hung my Queen in the last round.

I wasn't trying to tantalize; I'm just jammed-up at the moment. I will send the score as soon as I can. Glad you're excited! I find this games from Montreal 1899 and fin-de-siècle Canadian chess quite bracing. My enthusiasms for the oeuvre and the era stem in no small measure from the visionary service and enduring legacy of one A.M. Snellgrove, erstwhile Secretary of the Canadian Chess Association, who temporarily rescued that body from moribundity at the end of the nineteenth century, and in the process revivified Canadian chess throughout the Provinces and beyond.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 e5xd4 4. Nxe4 d6 5. Bc4 Nf6 6. NxNc6 b7xNc6 7. Nc3 Be7 8. O-O O-O 9. Re1 Bb7 10. e5 Nd7 11. Qg4 Nxe5 12. RxNe5 d6xRe5 13. Bh6 Bf6 14. Rd1 Qe7 15. Rd7 Bc8 16. Qxg7+ BxQg7 17. RxQe7 BxBh6 18. Ne4 Bf5 19. Nf6+ Kg7 20. Nh5+ Kg8 21. h4 Ra8d8 22. g4 Bxc2 23. Nf6+ Kh8 24. g5 Bg7 25. Nd7 Rd8e8 26. RxRe8 RxRe8 0-1.

The Montreal Gazette, April 8, 1899, p.5 (annotations omitted).

Thanks again for posting the Saunders - Flack game in my private forum thingy.

The above game have an error. I could see right away 4.Nxe4 is wrong and move 6.NxNc6 b7xNc6 won't work as this mixing up Descriptive with Algebraic. Often done when copying a Descriptive game to Algebraic.

I've fixed it. This is the corrected version.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 exd4 4. Nxd4 d6 5. Bc4 Nf6 6. Nxc6 bxc6 7. Nc3 Be7 8. O-O O-O 9. Re1 Bb7 10. e5 Nd7 11. Qg4 Nxe5 12. Rxe5 dxe5 13. Bh6 Bf6 14. Rd1 Qe7 15. Rd7 Bc8 16. Qxg7+ Bxg7 17. Rxe7 Bxh6 18. Ne4 Bf5 19. Nf6+ Kg7 20. Nh5+ Kg8 21. h4 Rad8 22. g4 Bxc2 23. Nf6+ Kh8 24. g5 Bg7 25. Nd7 Rde8 26. Rxe8 Rxe8 0-1

Here (White to move)

click for larger view

The move 15.Rd7 simply looks winning.

15...Qe8 16.Ne4

15...Qb4 16.Rxf7 Rxf7 17. Bxf7+ and Qxb4.

I just retranscribed the game and it came out as did your corrected version, so we're all set. I'll prepare PGN headers and moves and submit the game for upload.

Glad you enjoyed it, and I'm sorry I bungled the initial transcription. I had no trouble doing it today while I was awake! ;-) Next time, I'll wait to kibitz with a transcription until I'm fully alert and able to spot these errors and correct them before posting.

If overnight all your pre-1980 books have suddenly turned in algebraic you will know I have succeeded.

Whilst there I'll tell him not to play an American called Morphy in a match and thus avoid that humiliating 7-0 hammering he took in the 1859 Staunton-Morphy match.

Nothing wrong with your contributions at all. Copy from moves even if they are both in algebraic is a pain and mistakes do happen.

When I copy old games from newspaper columns I put them straight into a pgn viewer, that should minimise any errors.

And look how often the kibitzers on here (me included) type Kg8 when they/me mean Kg1 etc...

I arrived back from the past next week (a flux capacitor problem) had to giggle about with the controls to get back to today.

Whilst in next week I tried to get on here to see who won the American Championship but could not log on. I must be changing my password in a few days time and as yet I do not know what it is.

Staunton refused to budge on the notation matter. He's a pretty stubborn man. But said he will look out for that American chap I mentioned.

Keep up the good work.

This is a case where they can be very handy to catch typos asap.

No. Just a simple pgn viewer. (chess pad 2.0.2) It catches illegal moves.

I try to switch off completely. All too often I'd spot an idea, stop entering the moves and chase a rainbow variation for the next 10 or 15 minutes.

I'm just thinking about something if one has a computer running whilst entering.

You know we have an auto spell setting. It would be very annoying fun if a computer had a auto move corrector that you could not switch off.

You enter a move, the computer deems it wrong and changes it to what it considered is best.

You would never be able to enter a Latvian Gambit, an unsound sac...every game you entered would all end up being the same game.

But I often need to process many games at a time from a tournament book or various newspaper reports. So my goal is a combination of both accuracy and speed.

And, lack of pain, of course. But doing historical games there is bound to be some pain.

So here are my recommendations:

<1) ε²-processing.>

I've written about this a few times already. But it involves a partner duplicating the transcription, and nobody does that systematically (although it often is done unsystematically). Let's skip this for now...

<2a) Use a pgn-viewer.>

I like SCID, both because it's best (imo), and because it's free. So it's a tool everybody could use.

The idea of a pgn-viewer is to play the game, firstly. It also catches illegal moves.

But I find that many erroneous legal moves enter the scores. So...

<2b) Use a pgn-viewer with an engine.>

The idea of running an engine is to catch a certain obvious subset of these errors. Basically, you look for a wide swing in the eval.

This serves to alert one that special attention is needed. Maybe it's a good hidden tactic, but it could be a screwup. So, check the copy, and then look at the position.

Let's face it, it's tedious to input a game, and very easy to not analyze a game deeply when inputting. In fact, the goal is throughput, and not deep analysis.

The engine doesn't tell you what moves to input, of course, it merely sounds a bell to wake up the operator.

<3) The other technique is to use a highlighter to mark the moves as processed.>

I've learned saves time ultimately.

It's really very easy to skip over moves when inputting a game. Generally you notice this somewhat later, when your game starts hitting illegal moves. Then it's time to back up, and find where the screwup was.

A pain.

I use newspaper scans or PDF files. So I use the <Snippet Tool> to clip out a column of moves, and it allows me to highlight the clip. So, every 5 or 10 moves, I stop inputting, and mark off the moves I've input. This gives me a chance to look at the position, and keep the game properly synched up.

An engine is a tool, and a helpful one at that.

<Among the new arrivals was a 16-year-old orphan named Magnus Magnusson. Magnusson adopted the surname Smith. Shortly after his arrival in Manitoba in 1885, he headed to California to seek his fortune. As the California real estate bubble burst in 1887, Smith relocated to Vancouver, where he joined the local chess club. In 1895, he took up the study of chess seriously and began to play competitively. He returned to Winnipeg in 1898.

<As the result of the visit of Dr. Lasker, chess champion of the world, to this city last week, Magnus M. Smith, chess champion of Canada, will become associated with the New York player and will leave for that place at the end of the present month. Mr. Smith will asist [sic] Dr. Lasker in the preparation of his chess magazine and will also act as practicing partner for the doctor, while the latter is in preparation for any of his matches in defence of his title or for tournament play.