English Chess Forum

How many people here are capable of playing blindfold chess?

Timur Gareyev is building towards his attempt on the 46-player blindfold simultaneous display record.

http://en.chessbase.com/post/blindfold- ... ev-on-tour

Does adding just one more player to the total make it that much more difficult? It must be incredibly hard to do this as a simul. I am guessing that the strength of the opposition also matters, but just keeping track of the moves is hard enough.

Someone good said something like - most average players should be capable of playing a game blindfold.

I only tried it once, in my late teens, managing to quickly defeat my younger sister.
She knew the moves, and the value of the pieces just about.

Obviously the better, and more numerous, your opponents the more taxing it becomes.

John McKenna wrote:Someone good said something like - most average players should be capable of playing a game blindfold.

I'm not sure what "someone good" would know about what average players should be capable of. In my opinion, the biggest single element of being good at chess is the natural ability to keep a position in one's head, either over the long term or for a matter of seconds.

Andy Soltis did once write an interesting article outlining a memory training regime by which players might improve this ability. Towards the end he said "unfortunately, if you're over thirty... ".

I successfully played a blindfold simul against three competent players - I'd guess they would have been ECF 120 standard. But that was many years ago (in the 1970s iirc). From time to time in those days, and in the years that immediately followed, I'd play a single game if requested, usually as a 'party trick' for the amusement of others. It never ceased to astonish me that people were often in awe that the feat could be accomplished. Yet the same people would think nothing of a concert soloist performing a sonata or concerto without a score. In truth a single-game exercise isn't especially hard for someone of my standard; and fairly trivial for anyone better. A simul is more taxing. A 46-game simul though - sorry, I can't begin to imagine. But it raises interesting matters for neuroscience and the nature of memory. After all, how much harder is it to retain 46 chess positions compared with, say, 130 sonnets or the entire Iliad?

David Robertson wrote:I successfully played a blindfold simul against three competent players - I'd guess they would have been ECF 120 standard. But that was many years ago (in the 1970s iirc). From time to time in those days, and in the years that immediately followed, I'd play a single game if requested, usually as a 'party trick' for the amusement of others. It never ceased to astonish me that people were often in awe that the feat could be accomplished. Yet the same people would think nothing of a concert soloist performing a sonata or concerto without a score. In truth a single-game exercise isn't especially hard for someone of my standard; and fairly trivial for anyone better. A simul is more taxing. A 46-game simul though - sorry, I can't begin to imagine. But it raises interesting matters for neuroscience and the nature of memory. After all, how much harder is it to retain 46 chess positions compared with, say, 130 sonnets or the entire Iliad?

Interesting. The Iliad was written with recitation in mind, may only have been written down at a later date, and is structured to make it easier for the reciter to remember what comes next but, nonetheless, a few mistakes would slip in. None would be fatal though! I find any poetry quite easy to remember and prose a bit more difficult because it is not so closely structured. I don't remember any of it immediately, however, and find it takes a few readings before I can retain it and then only if I'm particularly interested in doing so. Chess games have structure, at least if played between people who are not complete beginners, but if a game is being played for the first time, as in a blindfold contest, memory has to be pretty exact immediately. One also has to remember calculations. I think this requires different brain functions than remembering poetry and remembering music is different again.

Blindfold simul surely far from pure memory?

Purely remembering 46 positions is almost nothing of course. Most chess players are >> than that. With a simul you not only have to keep 46 things in memory, but also keep getting them out of memory, updating them, working on them, then storing them again. Without letting them blur into each other!

Guess the equivalent with the Illiad would be having to also rewrite the thing, while concurrently working on small bits from multiple specified chapters.....

As far as I can recall, the only time that I attempted to play a blindfold game was at the Oban Chess Club Christmas Party on 21 December 1988.

I was literally blindfolded but not long into the opening I became aware that not only had my opponent vanished, but the other club members had disappeared into the bar, as “something had happened”

I imagine with a bit of practice one can become relatively competent quite quickly at a single blindfold game.

I guess a couple of preliminary issues are:

Is the move (ever) possible? E.g. Bf8-b4 is possible, but Bf8-c3 isn’t. Perhaps those who notate “Long-hand” have an initial advantage here. Learning which squares are black and which are white must be an easy “trick” to help;

Is the move (currently) possible? E.g. Bb4-e7 sounds playable, but not if your pawn is on d6, or if you’ve forgotten you’ve already exchanged your B for the N on c3.

Given the above, having actual sight of an empty board or access to the scoresheets must be a help. I guess the latter is not allowed for record attempts?

For those who have played blindfold, did you change your style? Do you stick to a familiar opening, play simple (and legal) moves, simplify if possible and wait for your (weaker) opponent to go wrong?

Regarding visualising a position, I guess one’s ability must be on a spectrum between not knowing, being able to work it out, and “knowing” instantly, perhaps with a concentration on the key part of the board. Does one visualise a diagram, or a full-size replica position? I know Geoff Chandler in “Master Chess – A Course in 21 Lessons” recommends solving tactical exercises on a full-size board which perhaps suggests that actual special relationships may be important.

I would speculate that the gap between one’s blindfolded ability and one’s normal OTB ability reduces as OTB ability increases - but would working on the former improve the latter?

As for memory – I remember touching on this in the thread about the play at the Edinburgh Festival, without getting very far. I know there are techniques for improving your memory (or for consciously memorizing long lists of seemingly unrelated objects). Perhaps the blindfold simul experts employ these either deliberately or accidentally? Again there must be simple things one can do to improve your chances of correctly recollecting the game – e.g. play 1.e4 for odd numbered games and 1.d4 for even numbered and so on.

Alistair Campbell wrote: Given the above, having actual sight of an empty board or access to the scoresheets must be a help. I guess the latter is not allowed for record attempts?

If you are good enough to even attempt to play several games without sight of pieces, being able to visualise an empty board with all the squares lettered is a fairly elementary skill. It's an important consideration as to the rules as to whether the giver of the simul is allowed or not to have all the moves so far read out if he or she should ask for them.

It's quite common in the car on the way to local matches to discuss opening theory and perhaps to post mortem on the way back, in both cases without use of a board. I see this as a two dimensional diagram or its computer screen equivalent. For remembering opening theory the move number sometimes helps.

Miles' 1984 exhibition is mentioned here and there's a much longer discussion in Hearst and Knott's very good (and quite expensive) book, which I happen to have in front of me: it tells me that Forum readers who have back copies of CHESS can find Miles' account in the issue for February 1994.

JustinHorton wrote:Miles' 1984 exhibition

Unless the opposition is specially chosen to lose quickly, it's worth noting that with 22 opponents, the simul lasted from midday to midnight. Doubling that count, are they thinking twenty four hours?

Here, an account of a blindfold simul at Streatham and Brixton chess club some years ago.

MartinCarpenter wrote: Purely remembering 46 positions is almost nothing of course. Most chess players are >> than that.

Seriously, I have no idea what you are talking about.

JustinHorton wrote:Miles' 1984 exhibition is mentioned here and there's a much longer discussion in Hearst and Knott's very good (and quite expensive) book, which I happen to have in front of me: it tells me that Forum readers who have back copies of CHESS can find Miles' account in the issue for February 1994.

I had forgotten the Hearst and Knott book - thanks for reminding me of that.

Lots of draws in the Miles blindfold simul, and one loss (to someone called Myrenne) which is well worth playing through (the games are all given at the Chessbase link above) to see why the game was lost (the final position is something I doubt I'd see over the board, let alone blindfold).

NickFaulks wrote:

MartinCarpenter wrote: Purely remembering 46 positions is almost nothing of course. Most chess players are >> than that.

Seriously, I have no idea what you are talking about.

Well, you can probably remember the starting position, and the positions after each side has moved once. That is 401 positions straight away...

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:

NickFaulks wrote:

MartinCarpenter wrote: Purely remembering 46 positions is almost nothing of course. Most chess players are >> than that.

Seriously, I have no idea what you are talking about.

Well, you can probably remember the starting position, and the positions after each side has moved once. That is 401 positions straight away...

I didn't think that what what Martin meant.