!!

Two exclamation marks, !!, label a move as very good, outstanding, or brilliant. The mark is often used for a decision that is difficult to find, surprising, or especially deep.

There is no universal test that forces an annotator to use !!. One writer may reward a precise sequence of moves, another the only defense that works, and another a creative idea. The symbol therefore expresses human judgment even when computer analysis supports it.

! gives more moderate praise. !? does not mean brilliant; it means interesting or speculative. A program may read !! in Portable Game Notation (PGN), the plain-text game format. When saving the file in standard form, it replaces !! with $3, a dollar sign followed by the number 3.