Learning To Play Blindfold Chess

I’ve always been impressed by the recall of top players. For instance, GM Hans Niemann basically walked through his entire game and all sidelines here. Apart from being impressive to people outside the game, speaking the “language” of chess also has utility. Whether it be following along in chess books, communicating with fellow players, or listening to analysis, investing some time in visualization will likely pay dividends as you try to improve your game.

For that reason, I’ve started trying to play blindfolded games (see GM Anish Giri smoke 4 people here, though that is far from the record of a 48-game blindfold simul by GM Timur Gareyev) and have found a couple of specific practices that have helped me out:

1. Memorize a couple famous miniatures

 For me, there are two that I have down. Fischer’s Game Of The Century and Morphy’s Opera Game. Both are useful because they are relatively short with concrete and forcing ideas. It is also useful to picture why certain defensive tries in critical positions don’t work, or where the opponent goes wrong and why.

2. Use shortcuts to get square color

When I first started trying to learn visualization, I often got specific squares slightly wrong. I knew the quadrant the square was in, but maybe would have visualized the wrong color. Ideally it will become second nature, but a nice intermediate step from counting out to the square manually from known squares is to utilize mental shortcuts or mnemonics.

One that has worked well for me as someone who has spent some time around music is to divide the files into two parts: an Am7 chord and a Bdim chord (with an added h-file!). Then even-numbered ranks on files that fall into an Am7 chord (ACEG) are white while even-numbered ranks on files that fall into a Bdim chord (BDFH) are black.

3. Work on visualizing from both sides

If you only practice visualizing from the white side, I have found that you might be in trouble when you visualize from the black side. I also have found that there is value in knowing the squares in absolute terms rather than location (i.e. f7 doesn’t mean “upper right”).

One way to do that is to use chess.com’s visualization tool: https://www.chess.com/vision

 4. Build up by practicing simple endgames and checkmating patterns

Starting with 32 pieces on the board might be a little tough. Instead, try building up from endgames. First QK v K, then RK v K, then KP v K, etc. As you get comfortable with the basic checkmates, try solving simple puzzles too. There are some great examples on YouTube of top players solving pretty difficult puzzles without a board, for example here.

5. Practice against the computer

You can practice against the computer using https://www.chess.com/settings/board, changing the piece style to “blindfold”, and typing in your moves.

What do you guys think? Anybody else have any luck with different methods?