Chess Blindfolded

Originally posted by RahimK
True, he doesn't do this all the time though. Him and Shirov had a staring match. Who could stare at the ceiling the longest 🙂

I saw them along with several other Gm's at the canadian open last year. I was in charge of the demo board for the top 3 board and I remember Shirov pacing up and down the boards and then both of them staring at the ceiling and thinking about the position.

Haha, thanks, cool and interesting. Hope you witnessed some good chess.

Originally posted by TommyC
Haha, thanks, cool and interesting. Hope you witnessed some good chess.

Some politics there.

If you were a great chess player and you wrote a book and you were playing another great chess player who didn't write a book but was the hometown favourite,

Would you throw the game to sell more book copies? 🙂

Politics I tell ya.

All sports are corrupt, and I don't think chess as a sport but it still is.

Originally posted by davidtravelling
I once played a guy at my school (who is now a FIDE master I believe) who beat me while he was blind folded and I could see.

Has anyone else had similar embarassing experience?

(well actually i was embarrassed until i realised just how good he was - he was on derren brown when DB played all those chess masters)

You play blindfolded chess everytime you caculate. Tisdall recommends practicing blindfolded chess and techniques for improving the ability in order to make you a stronger player. If you can find willing friend to practice against most chess servers allow you to turn the pieces off but still have the board, playchess does although it leaves annoying dots instead of pieces which you can only remove by editing the font file. (so much for German perfection) I imagine most players can follow their own opening repertoire pretty deep in their mind without any need for a board or much effort needed, the real challenge comes when trying to get a grip on unfamiliar or complex positions.

If you want to read further both Tisdall's Improve your chess now and Aagaard's Excelling at Chess Caculation touch the subject. Tisdall's book covers it in a fair amount of detail where as EACC just shows how its used in practical chess while saying buy Tisdall's book if you want to know the details behind the idea.

Tisdall points out that a lot of chess mistakes are from seeing the position wrong several moves down a caculated line since reading his book iv tried to see if id been making this mistake in my own games, the number of times id worked something out but had the final position wrong in my head was shocking......well when I say wrong it was often over looking something that I wouldnt over look if it position was on the board in front of me.

Heres an example.



This is a position from an OTB game, in the game id been quite worried about just slowly getting crushed kingside so had been looking at b5 and the various responces....anyway one of the lines id been looking at ran



1... b5 2. cxb5 cxb5 3. a3 Nd3+ 4. Nxd3 exd3 5. Rxd3 b4 6. axb4 Qxb4 7. Rd2.....here in all the analysis after this id played Ba6 expecting 8.Qd1 and went on working out lines. Naturally white just plays 8.Qxa6 and is a piece up. I probably spent a good 3-5 mins working out where the play would go after Ba6 queen move....time totally wasted.........I was shocked how often this occurred in my own games, trying to play blindfolded chess has certainly reduced it.


Edit - Finally got the FEN to work! 😛

Originally posted by Marinkatomb
I've played a few blindfold games and amazingly I am unbeaten! I've only played three games though 😛

And who did you play? 😛

Originally posted by Freddie2006
And who did you play? 😛

How can he know? He was blindfold!

Originally posted by Nordlys
How can he know? He was blindfold!

Freddie is being facetious, he was my last opponent. 😉