Chess and Blindfold Chess
Classical Chess
Classical chess is, in theoretical terms, dead as far as human beings are concerned. There are now programs available from the internet – Stockfish being a case in point – that even Magnus Carlssen, arguably the greatest player ever to have lived, has absolutely no chance against.
This doesn’t diminish the value of it between two human players though – plus there are variants such as Rapid Chess, FischerRandom Chess (in which the starting position of the pieces are jumbled) that still offer scope for an enjoyable fight between two human minds in relatively uncharted territory.
Many, many moons ago, and for many, many years I studied a hell of a lot of chess literature – ancient and modern – and played a lot of competitive games at club and league level. I did manage to reach a reasonable grading, but a lack of real talent (chess players will know what I mean) meant I was never going to make any mark beyond a certain level and, whilst getting close, never managed to break through the 2000 ELO barrier.
However, it was during this active period I became fascinated by the reports of people playing chess without looking at the board – so called Blindfold chess.
Blindfold Chess
This was not just playing one game without sight of the board against a sighted opponent – most reasonably competent players are able to do this, (my school friend Clive and I used to play a game this way on the school bus into Tunbridge Wells when physically separated by all the other kids crowding onto it), it was more the records of people playing numerous people simultaneously whilst blindfolded………… what method or technique could help in achieving this?
Using a virtual ‘index’
As for the need to keep sentences in order with Pi Memorisation, so it is necessary for simultaneous blindfold chess games. I must stress here that my own ambitions in this respect always were much, much more modest than such dizzying heights as the current world record of 48 held by Grandmaster Timur Gareyev!
The approach I eventually gravitated towards was picturing a chest of drawers with big numbers 1, 2, 3 etc painted on the front of each drawer. The role of the number is as a virtual index, triggering recall of a particular board inside the drawer, in much the same way that the DG at the start of a sentence block in Pi Memorisation (see page) triggers the sentence “Dog stadium may sell muesli”
Playing the games
When playing the chess games , the process goes like this:
- Go to drawer 1
- Open drawer, consider position and announce my move, which the referee makes on my behalf
- Receive opponent move in reply, verbally relayed by the referee
- Close the drawer and move onto the next
- Repeat 2, 3, and 4 ad so on
In my active experiments with this I got to the point of being able to handle 5 games in relative comfort – my very best was 8, but I did not tend to score very well at this number (I don’t like losing!)
Salient points
- Once a drawer is opened, for me at least, it’s not like looking down on it like the view of a snooker table as on the television. It’s more the case that, as your virtual eye roams over the board you can focus in on the pieces that ‘matter’, whilst ‘knowing’ where other pieces are…… it’s almost as though you give a quick look around the periphery before concentrating on the real matter.
- If some of this looks bonkers, have you never been trying to unsuccessfully recall a person’s name, then run through the alphabet searching for the first letter of the name? Then the full name appears when you hit the right initial letter? Well, this is pretty much how this works, except it is a number on the front of the drawer rather than an initial letter of someone’s name.
Last Comments
If you are an active chess player (which I am now not, though still dip into online chess portals like FICS and LiChess occasionally). why not give this a go? Again, I think you might surprise yourself how effective such a systematic approach can prove to be.