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ChessOps - FORSYTH NOTATION
Board Position
Smothered Mate

Invented by David Forsyth, chess editor of the Glasgow Weekly Herald in 1883, it provides a way of recording positions without needing a diagram or an Algebraic/Descriptive list of the moves that led to the position.

Starting top-left, at White's QR8(a8), and running left-right by ranks, all pieces and spaces are enumerated by letter or number with ends of ranks denoted by either commas or strokes.

 Forsyth Illustration
Black's pieces can be written in capitals with circles around them (above, right) but generally WHITE is recorded in CAPITALS with Black in lower-case. Thus the Smothered Mate diagram (above, left) is written in as many (or few) lines as needed:
FORSYTH: r1b1k2r/ppppqppp/
2n5/8/1PP2B2/3n1N2/
1P1NPPPP/R2QKB1R
 r1b1k2r/ppppqppp/2n5/8/1PP2B2/
3n1N2/1P1NPPPP/R2QKB1R
Basics Notation 2 - Descriptive Notation 4 - Comparisons