This website is quite cool. I played a bit of blindfold chess vs my girlfriend as I drove down to London the other day. Is blindfold chess and doing these visualisation excesses likely to improve any aspect of my OTB play do you think I?
Originally posted by Dewi Jones http://www.janmatthies.info/chess/cvt/cvt.htm
This website is quite cool. I played a bit of blindfold chess vs my girlfriend as I drove down to London the other day. Is blindfold chess and doing these visualisation excesses likely to improve any aspect of my OTB play do you think I?
Originally posted by Dewi Jones http://www.janmatthies.info/chess/cvt/cvt.htm
This website is quite cool. I played a bit of blindfold chess vs my girlfriend as I drove down to London the other day. Is blindfold chess and doing these visualisation excesses likely to improve any aspect of my OTB play do you think I?
Hi Dewi
I think it improves your ability to improve... but does nothing specific and you probably won't notice any changes.
Originally posted by Dewi Jones Obviously, without the blindfold 🙂.
But I couldn't see the board.
I believe if you can actually visualize the positons, which I can't do, rather than just remembering where you moved pieces, then that should be a great asset in complicated positions requiring several variations to be analyzed before making your move. Sometimes in these positions I keep forgetting where I moved the pieces in my mind and have to go through it again and again until I finally make my move hoping for the best.
Originally posted by RJHinds I believe if you can actually visualize the positons, which I can't do, rather than just remembering where you moved pieces, then that should be a great asset in complicated positions requiring several variations to be analyzed before making your move. Sometimes in these positions I keep forgetting where I moved the pieces in my mind and have to go through it again and again until I finally make my move hoping for the best.
At 2260 visual remeberance of positions should be part & parcel of your chess prowess..."hoping for the best"?... only on a bad day at the board maybe?
Playing blindfold does improve your calculation/concentration skills, in my opinion.
Originally posted by Hells Caretaker At 2260 visual remeberance of positions should be part & parcel of your chess prowess..."hoping for the best"?... only on a bad day at the board maybe?
Playing blindfold does improve your calculation/concentration skills, in my opinion.
The question is how deep one analyses, while I have no real problems kepting about three moves in memory I would expect RJ talking about seven to eight at least...
Originally posted by Hells Caretaker At 2260 visual remeberance of positions should be part & parcel of your chess prowess..."hoping for the best"?... only on a bad day at the board maybe?
Playing blindfold does improve your calculation/concentration skills, in my opinion.
I am talking about over-the-board chess with clocks, touch and move, etc. I am no were near 2260 in OTB chess and on RHP I do not need visualization or a perfect memory, because I can use the analyze board to move the pieces around and see with my eyes the exact position of the result of a series of moves.
Originally posted by RJHinds I am talking about over-the-board chess with clocks, touch and move, etc. I am no were near 2260 in OTB chess and on RHP I do not need visualization or a perfect memory, because I can use the analyze board to move the pieces around and see with my eyes the exact position of the result of a series of moves.
Even so you must have more than a smattering of visualisation, I play quite well at club level & have the ability to play into a middle - endgame against a novice without sight of the board...analyze board/position!! - maybe if everybody used/knew about that feature they could be 2200+ too?
By the way I can't see an earlier refrence to touch & move or clocks...why are you so defensive?...don't tell me I can guess...it's the 'Syrian Assad Counter Gambit'.
The Melody Amber tournaments always used to amaze me; the quality of play despite not seeing the board was incredible. The players did blunder occasionally, as you would expect.
Must be honest I've never tried it, but I am sure it must help commit patterns and tabiyas to memory. My gutfeel is I would be fine visualising pawn structures and piece placement out of openings I am familiar with, but I would misplace something sooner or later (probably sooner) when the position drifted away from my own knowledge of theory. I can imagine that when you lose track of where one or two pieces are, your game might fall apart rather rapidly in successive moves!
Some players are better than others at blindfold chess. A friend of mine who always had the upper hand against me over the board would score quite badly against me when playing blindfold when I used to drive up to London with him in the early 80's to computer exhibitions. I could beat him and drive the car at the same time..!
Whilst coaching the Welsh juniors in the 90's I used to play one of the others parents at blindfold while we were travelling to while away the time. On one trip to Scotland I'd been playing blindfold with my opponent (who was sitting across the on the other side of the corridor) for 2 hours when I realised that I was staring at a lady in the seat opposite and muttering strange things (e4,d4, Nf3 etc). When I realised I apologised and explained that I was just playing chess and only a little mad..!
It's easy to play against a booky opponent who plays standard opening as the positions are familiar but harder to play people who leave pieces on random squares which you end up forgetting in your calculations.
Thanks for that greenpawn - makes for very interesting reading.
It sounds like what Zukertort describes is what I would call "chunking" - recalling detail by storing generalised images or snapshots and using markers (such as board numbers) to help reinforce the detail.
Funny how that never ever helped me against the Sicilian.
Originally posted by Hells Caretaker Even so you must have more than a smattering of visualisation, I play quite well at club level & have the ability to play into a middle - endgame against a novice without sight of the board...analyze board/position!! - maybe if everybody used/knew about that feature they could be 2200+ too?
By the way I can't see an earlier refrence to touch & mov ...[text shortened]... are you so defensive?...don't tell me I can guess...it's the 'Syrian Assad Counter Gambit'.
I am just correcting your misunderstanding of what I was talking about, since my rating on RHP has nothing to do with it. At first I had to fiqure out what the number 2260 meant, since I never referred to my RHP rating. It was not until I read the comment of a later poster indicating what I was talking about that I realized that you were referring to my RHP rating. Now, I just hope we got that straight.
Originally posted by RJHinds I am just correcting your misunderstanding of what I was talking about, since my rating on RHP has nothing to do with it. At first I had to fiqure out what the number 2260 meant, since I never referred to my RHP rating. It was not until I read the comment of a later poster indicating what I was talking about that I realized that you were referring to my RHP rating. Now, I just hope we got that straight.
We understand, alas I'm perplexed as to you not understanding a 'base' ELO on your profile. Anyway... No further Tourney here.
Originally posted by Hells Caretaker We understand, alas I'm perplexed as to you not understanding a 'base' ELO on your profile. Anyway... No further Tourney here.
Blindfold chess, visualisation.
27 Jul '12 20:48
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