Just plain old Rogue.

https://britzl.github.io/roguearchi...

It long predates the 1985 PC manual versions in the link above, here's a bit from wiki about it's creation:

<<Development>

<At UC Santa Cruz>

The concept of Rogue originated with Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman.[2] Toy grew up in Livermore, California, where his father was a nuclear scientist. Once a year, his father's workplace allowed employees' families to visit, which included allowing them to use the facility's mainframe system to play games. Toy took interest in the text-based Star Trek game (1971), which represented space combat through characters on screen, and required players to make strategic decisions each turn. Toy took to learn programming and recreate this game on other computer systems that he could access, including the Processor Technology Sol-20 and the Atari 400.[3]

Toy subsequently enrolled in computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in the late 1970s. Working first on UCSC's PDP-11 and then its VAX-11, Toy began exploring what games were available over ARPANET, the predecessor of the current Internet. One game that intrigued him was Colossal Cave Adventure (also known as Adventure) (1976) by William Crowther and Don Woods. Adventure, considered the first text-based adventure game, challenged the player to explore a cave system through descriptions given by the computer and commands issued by the player. Toy was impressed by the game and started writing his own.[3]>

Yep.

https://www.mamedev.org/

That includes the iron too!

I do think of 1980, and Fairfield W. Hoban's tenure as the point at which it went from predominantly descriptive to predominantly algebraic, though.

But let's see. I've just pulled up Burt Hochberg's last issue, October 1979.

Soltis's Column: Descriptive

Troy Line Advertisement: Advertises books called "English, 1...N-KB3 Systems", and "English, 1...P-K4".

Karpov got married. The magazine doesn't say it, but I think it was a mixed marriage. He used algebraic, she used descriptive.

Benko's Column: Algebraic

Gheorghiu's Column: Algebraic

Cienfuegos '79: Algebraic

Puzzles on p. 579: Descriptive

11-year old wins $2,000: Algebraic

1979 Paul Masson: Descriptive

Pandolfini's Column: Algebraic

Thinking Techniques For the Amateur: Descriptive

Ask The Masters: Both

Puzzle on p. 587: Descriptive

Larry Evans On Chess: Descriptive

What's The Best Move: Descriptive

Clearly, algebraic is superior - so it was simply a matter of time. But why such a long, long delay (remember, as <Missy> points out, even Staunton pointed out the superiority of the German notation). And even more importantly, why circa-1973?

Perhaps because of Fischer's winning of the WCC and exposure to international chess it precipitated?

<We hail with great satisfaction the fact that Mr. Boden, so distinguished a member of the Chess circle, shares our views as to the feasibility of adopting the German Notation; but he very properly proposes before advocating its use, to consult the wishes and opinions of our country Chess Clubs. We shall, therefore, have great pleasure in hearing from the Secretaries of Chess Clubs on the subject. Should the majority of English players be in favour of the German Notation, we should propose that the Chess editors of the country do hold a Congress for the purpose of adopting the nomenclature of the German system in their articles.>

This is clearly a minority opinion.

(No need to rehash points like compactness, reliability, or clarity - just do a google search on "algebraic vs descriptive notation".)

<... FIDE wanted to standardize. Fischer had nothing to do with it>

I wasn't suggesting that Fischer personally advocated for it (as we know he didn't), but that he was instrumental to exposing the US chess playing public to the international world of chess.

But your mention of FIDE is interesting. Did they change policies in the 70's?

Also - did the emigration of various Soviet Refusniks and other refuges from the Communist East to the US provide an impetus? The 1973 CL&R I cited above did have the lead article by Kavalek after all.

There can't be many systems of notation where one is so clearly superior to the other. Arabic numerals versus Roman numerals, I guess, for anything other than decorating a monument. But there did seem something a little antiseptic about algebraic at first, and I miss the symmetry of descriptive (1.P-K4 P-K4 versus 1.e4 e5).

"The same month [Novermber 1924] F.P. Betts of London, Ontario had a letter published on page 204 of the American Chess Bulletin in which he denounced a book by Edward Lasker (unnamed, but presumably Chess and Checkers The Way to Mastership) for using the ‘extraordinary’ algebraic notation.

‘This mania for improving the established chess notation by freak innovations seems to entirely overlook the fact that there is an immense volume of chess literature centuries old in which the old and accepted notation is enshrined, the value of which would be greatly impaired if this novel jargon should become the vogue.’

The earliest full game in algebraic in Chess Life that I can positively identify so far is Balashov-Saidy in June, 1973. Algebraic inserts began in January 1973.

I don't remember ever seeing an algebraic game in Chess Review, but I've heard they debated it on the letters page, so it's possible there was a stray one here and there. Also possible, even likely that Chess Life has some early examples. Maybe a case where they got a game in late and just didn't have time to convert it. Chess Life published a lot of raw games with no notes or anything.

One oddity. In those early Algebraic inserts in Chess Life, they used a colon to indicate captures, instead of an x (Q:d1, rather than Qxd1). Evans used algebraic a couple of times in his answers, but used x. Hochberg said FIDE considered both acceptable, but I don't remember seeing colons outside Chess Life, and they're ugly and harder to type (one advantage of algebraic is you use the Shift key less).

E.g.

https://books.google.com/books?id=k...