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I am reading a book on chess openings called 51 Chess Openings for Beginners by Bruce Albertson and the author uses notation like so:

  1. ...†† Kxf7

What does the †† mean? I know a single † means check however the author doesn't (to my knowledge) explain what the †† is meant to signify.

EDIT: here's a screenshot to provide some context of its usage

excerpt from chess book the next page

ThaDon
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  • Are the three dots (...) from the original source or inserted by you to replace white's preceding move? Because I would expect the ++ to be written after a move, not before one. – Annatar Jul 06 '17 at 06:16
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    It seems rather bizarre that you have a question about a book but do not identify the book. Is it that you don't know the title and author of the book (the title page has been ripped out maybe?), or you just don't want us to know? – bof Jul 06 '17 at 22:51
  • @bof "51 Chess Openings for Beginners" -- Bruce Albertson – ThaDon Jul 07 '17 at 04:04

3 Answers3

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Well, after your update I come to the conclusion that these signs are used by the author to mark the omission of the notation of the respective move by White.

This is not a common usage of them, and I have never seen it before. It should be documented somewhere at the beginning or end of the book. But I'd not be surprised if it's not, since it doesn't reflect a healthy common sense to use the check symbol of all things for this purpose to begin with..

Annatar
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  • Yeah, the first page he has an index of notation and nowhere is a double cross mentioned! It's so strange. Maybe a testament to the need of a non-subject matter expert to review a book before it's published ;) – ThaDon Jul 06 '17 at 13:24
  • I posted another page, now I suspect this is to denote "in the paragraph below I'll describe this move" as @patbarron had eluded in another answer – ThaDon Jul 06 '17 at 13:30
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    Oh god, a triple chess sign. Throw away this book. – Annatar Jul 06 '17 at 13:35
  • (just joking, but.. really..) – Annatar Jul 06 '17 at 13:35
  • lol, yes. I'm a beginner so I don't have much experience with the notation. As a side note the English notation makes way more sense than algebraic from a visualization point of view. With algebraic, I find myself constantly looking back at the board and counting "1,2,3...a,b,c". And reversing that from black perspective. I guess it just takes practice. – ThaDon Jul 06 '17 at 13:39
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    Yes, you will get used to it ;) – Annatar Jul 06 '17 at 13:46
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If † means check, then †† means a double check. A double check is when two pieces give check at the same time. For example:

[White "NN"]
[Black "NN"]
[FEN "7k/8/5Rpn/8/3Q4/8/8/7K w - - 0 1"]
[SetUp "1"]
[CurrentPosition "6nk/5N2/6K1/8/8/8/8/8 b - - 1 2"]

1.Rf8++

If this does not apply to the position in question, then you should know that †† is sometimes generically used to indicate a footnote.

D M
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    Rarely, I have also seen ++ to be used as a symbol for checkmate in older books (where double check only got a single +). This is just for completeness, in this particular case the ++ cannot possible mean checkmate (because of the following Kxf7). – Annatar Jul 06 '17 at 06:22
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    I'm not sure if the symbols in the question are intended to be plus signs (in which case they'd represent double-check or checkmate), or if they're intended to be daggers (in which case I assume they have some editorial meaning I don't know about). – patbarron Jul 06 '17 at 07:12
  • Added an excerpt from the book to provide context – ThaDon Jul 06 '17 at 12:33
  • @patbarron I'm leaning toward your "dagger" explanation. Seems like the author is saying "this is the move I will elaborate on" – ThaDon Jul 06 '17 at 13:31
  • D M, I believe your footnote theory is on the right track. I think it's meant to state "the focus of the following paragraphs will be on this move" – ThaDon Jul 06 '17 at 13:50
  • It's pretty bad that they use the same notation for both. They should have used a normal + instead of the † to mean check, if they were going to have some other meaning for ††. Oh well. – D M Jul 06 '17 at 15:57
  • And yet there were no checks in the OP example let alone a double – edwina oliver Jan 27 '20 at 17:32
  • @edwinaoliver He edited to add the example after I had posted this answer. – D M Jan 28 '20 at 05:20
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Single plus sign means a check. Here the king can move, or a piece can interpose (place itself in between the checking piece and the king) to prevent the check, or the checking piece can be captured.

Double plus means a double check. Here the king has to move only.

PhishMaster
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Seth Projnabrata
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