N3e4

N3e4 is a chess move notation that belongs to the descriptive notation system. It indicates that a knight moves to the square e4, with the starting knight coming from the third rank. In practice, this form is primarily encountered in older chess literature and some historical game collections rather than in modern play.

The core idea behind N3e4 is to specify which knight is making the move by referencing its starting rank. If two knights occupy the third rank and both can legally move to e4, the notation N3e4 would be ambiguous unless additional context clarifies which knight is intended. In many contemporary sources, such ambiguity is avoided by using algebraic notation with file-based disambiguation, such as Nce4 or Nge4, to indicate the knight from the c-file or the g-file, respectively.

In modern practice, the descriptive form N3e4 is rarely used. Algebraic notation, which has become standard worldwide, expresses the same move more precisely as Nc3e4 or Ng3e4 or, more typically, simply Nce4 or Nge4 depending on which knight is intended. The historical descriptive system sometimes preserved the rank-based reference (the “3” in N3e4) but requires careful interpretation within a given game’s move order and position.

Overall, N3e4 is a legacy notation example illustrating how descriptive systems conveyed piece origin, a concept now largely superseded by algebraic clarity.