If you play rated chess in the United States, the rulebook governing your scoresheet is not the FIDE Laws of Chess. It is the US Chess Federation's Official Rules of Chess, and rule 15, "The Recording of Games", is the part that sits beside your clock all afternoon. The two rulebooks agree on most of it. They part company on three points that actually come up at the board: which notation you may write in, whether you may write the move before you play it, and which piece of paper counts as the official record.
What Rule 15A Actually Says
The core obligation reads:
In the course of play each player is required to record the game (both the player's and the opponent's moves), move after move, as clearly and legibly as possible, on the scoresheet prescribed for the competition.
Three requirements follow from that sentence, and each has teeth.
- Both sides' moves, move after move. Not your own moves only, and not a batch written up at the end of the hour.
- Legibly, on the prescribed sheet. If the event hands you a scoresheet, that sheet is the standard for the event.
- Play first, then write. Rule 15A is explicit: "The player must first make the move, and then record it on the scoresheet." This changed in 2014 to line up with FIDE and with the arrival of electronic scoring devices, and for players who learned the older habit it is still the easiest rule to break by accident.
Rule 15A also carries a requirement FIDE does not spell out the same way: the scoresheet "shall be visible to the arbiter (tournament directors) and the opponent throughout the game." Keeping your sheet in your lap, or angled away, is itself a violation, whatever is written on it.
The penalty is not a forfeit. Directors are told to warn first, and the standard sanction under 1C2a is two minutes added to your opponent's unused time.
The Paper Scoresheet Variation
Here is the first real divergence from FIDE, and it surprises visiting players.
US Chess publishes rule 15A Variation I, the paper scoresheet variation:
The player using a paper scoresheet may first make the move, and then write it on the scoresheet, or vice versa.
Under this variation, writing your move down before you play it is permitted. FIDE does not allow that at all, except when you are claiming a draw or sealing a move. And the variation "does not need to be advertised in advance", so an event may be running under it without saying so.
Two things follow. If you want to write first, ask the director whether the variation is in force rather than assuming. And if you do write first, do not sit there rubbing out and rewriting the move while you decide: directors are told that repeatedly altering a written move before playing it can be penalised under rule 20C, "Use of notes prohibited".
Descriptive Notation Is Still Legal
The second divergence is the one that catches out anyone who assumes the FIDE Laws apply everywhere. Rule 15A says:
Algebraic notation is standard, but descriptive or computer notation is permitted.
So a US Chess scoresheet written in descriptive notation, with P-K4 and N-KB3, is a valid scoresheet. It is rare now, and no one under about forty writes it, but the rulebook has not withdrawn it, and older players in club events still do. FIDE's Laws recognise algebraic only.
This matters if you plan to digitise your games later. Software that reads scoresheets, ScanChess included, works in algebraic notation: a sheet written as P-K4 is not converted, and not checked. If you are keeping games you intend to archive or analyse, write them in algebraic even where the rulebook would let you do otherwise. Our guide to descriptive versus algebraic notation covers how to read the older form when you meet it in a book.
When You May Stop Writing
Rules 15B and 15C cover time pressure, splitting it by the kind of time control.
- 15B, non-sudden-death control. If either player has less than five minutes left and does not have an increment of 30 seconds or more added each move, both players are excused from keeping score.
- 15C, sudden-death control. The same exemption, in a sudden-death control.
Note what makes the difference: the increment, not the clock in front of you. Directors are told that only games with an increment of 30 seconds or more, on a properly set increment-capable clock, require score-keeping right through the last five minutes. A clock that cannot do increment, or one set wrongly for an increment control, puts the game back under 15B or 15C.
The rest of rule 15 fills in the surrounding cases: 15D on using an opponent's scoresheet for assistance, 15E on borrowing, 15F on reconstructing the score after a time control, 15G on ownership of scoresheets, and 15H and 15I on reporting results.
Which Sheet Is the Official One
Rule 43 defines a scoresheet as "any piece of paper, electronic, or mechanical recording device that allows a player to comply with rule 15A", and then answers the question clubs actually ask:
- If the event provides a scoresheet, that sheet is the standard for the event.
- If the event provides none, any method of keeping score is allowed as long as it satisfies 15A.
- If a copy of the score has to be handed in, the director may require the provided sheet, or may accept any method of supplying the score.
Directors are advised to be flexible about this. Players who keep their games in a notebook, or on a certified electronic device, can hand in a copy or a printout instead. Electronic scoresheets are a separate matter: they are subject to US Chess certification guidelines, and an uncertified device may only be used at the director's discretion.
For an organiser, the practical reading is that your own printed sheet becomes the official one the moment you hand it out, so it is worth putting your club's name, the round and the board number on it before it reaches the table. Our printable scoresheet generator does that, on US Letter as well as A4.
A Short Checklist Before Round One
- Write in algebraic, even though descriptive is still permitted.
- Play the move, then write it, unless you have checked that the paper scoresheet variation is in force.
- Keep the sheet where your opponent and the director can see it.
- Under five minutes with no 30-second increment, you may stop writing; with the increment, you may not.
- Find out before the game whether a copy has to be handed in, and to whom.
Sort the sheets before they go in a box: a photographed scoresheet becomes a searchable PGN in a few seconds, and a shoebox of paper never does.