Some explanation as to the system used to communicate moves would probably be in order in case someone would like to plot our moves on their own board. Let me humbly acknowledge, however, that this is not Grandmaster-level play. But what we lacked in tactics and strategy, I believe we made up for in creative output (over 70 poems in all.)We utilized a common grid system employing letters A-H and numbers 1-8. The accompanying graphics for each move will show which piece has moved and from where.
The actual move is constructed with the abbreviation of the piece being moved (K=King, Q=Queen, B=Bishop, N=Knight and R=Rook) and the alpha-numeric designation of the square it is going to. Thus the move 'Bf5' would mean that a Bishop is moving to the f5 square. The odd exemption to this standard is the Pawn which is noted only by the square it has landed on.
Playing over e-mail, not face-to-face, with two independent boards had its pitfalls and more than once we had to double-check to be sure our board layouts were identical. Occasionally it was discovered that we were out of sync. A move would have to be taken back resulting in its corresponding poem having to be reworked or altogether scrapped. Bill had it worse than I, having chosen the black pieces, he was having to work with the grid in reverse. For him the eighth rank was closest and the first farthest. The files went from 'h' on his left to 'a' on his right. Very counterintuitive!
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