SGF was originally created under a different name by Anders Kierulf for his SmartGO program.
The first letter designates the column (left to right), the second the row (top to bottom).
The author intentionally broke with the tradition of labeling moves (and points) with letters "A"-"T" (excluding "i") and numbers 1-19.
The upper left corner as origin of the board corresponds to the way most modern computers represent screen coordinates to simplify integration of text and graphics.
Games currently supported[3] are Amazons, Ataxx, Backgammon, Blokus,[4] Byte, Chase, Chess, DVONN, Exxit, Focus, Gess, GIPF, Go, Gobblet, Gomoku+Renju, Hex, Hive, Hnefatafl, Jungle, Kropki, Kuba, Lines of Action, Neutron, Nine men's morris, Octi, Philosopher's Football, Plateau, PÜNCT, Quadrature, Reversi (Othello), Sahara, Shogi, TAMSK, Tantrix, Trax, Tripples, Tumbling Down, TwixT, Xiangqi, YINSH and ZÈRTZ.
The standard specifies additional game-specific properties for Go, Backgammon, Lines of Action, Hex, Amazons, Octi, Gess, and TwixT.
[6] The FF[4] standard has some problems that make it impossible, or at least unreasonable, to adopt it for large game collections.