Skyrocket Your Calculation Skills (2)

A super effective tool - Blindfold exercises (part 2)

Hello everyone, one of the most effective ways that made my calculation skills and OTB rating improve extremly rapidly was doing blindfold exercises. If you take the time to solve all the exercises I am going to post in this topic and in the next topics that are coming the next days you will surely make massive progress too.

How do blindfold exercises work?

You will be given a series of moves played in a game, usually these moves were played in real OTB games. But not the complete notation of the game will be shown, the final moves are missing and your job is to find the best/winning moves that ended the game. That means you play through the given game moves in your head without moving pieces on a board and then try to find the final winning move(s). Note that it will be tougher from exercise to exercise.

1) 1.e4 c6 2.Nc3 d5 3.d3 e5 4.Nf3 Nf6 5.Nxe5 0:1

2) 1.e4 d5 2.Nc3 dxe4 3.Nxe4 e5 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.Bb5 Bg4 6.d4 exd4 7.Qxd4 Bxf3 8.Qe5+ Be7 9.Qxg7 0:1

3) 1.e4 c5 2.f4 d5 3.exd5 Nf6 4.Nc3 Nxd5 5.Qf3 Nb4 6.Kd1 N8c6 7.Bb5 Bd7 8.a3 Nxc2 9.Rb1 0:1 

4) 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Bf4 Bg7 4.e3 d6 .5.h3 0-0 6.Bd3 Nbd7 7.Nbd2 Re8 8.c3 h6 9.0-0 0:1

5) 1.Nf3 d5 2.g3 Bg4 3.Ne5 Bf5 4.Bg2 Nd7 5.f4 e6 6.c4 Ngf6 7.Nc3 d4 8.Bxb7 dxc3 9.Nc6 0:1

6) 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.c4 c6 4.Qc2 dxc4 5.Qxc4 Bf5 6.Nc3 Nbd7 7.e3 e6 8.h3 h6 9.Bd3 0:1

7)  1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4  4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Ng5 Ngf6 6.Bd3 e6 7.N5f3 c5 8.c3 Be7 9.Ne5 cxd4 10.cxd4  Nxe5 11.dxe5 Qa5+ 12.Qd2 0:1

8) 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3 d5 4.Bb5 dxe4 5.Nxe5 Qd5 6.Qa4 Nge7 7.f4 Bd7 8.Nxd7 Kxd7 9.0-0 Nf5 10.Bxc6+ bxc6 11.Re1 Bc5+ 12.Kh1 0:1

9) 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 g6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Bg7 5.Be3 Nf6 6.Nc3 Nc6 7.Qd2 0-0 8.f3 d5 9.0-0-0 dxe4 10.fxe4 Ng4 11.Bg1 0:1

10) 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.g3 g6 3.c4 Bg7 4.Nc3 c6 5.d4 d5 6.cxd5 cxd5 7.Ne5 Nbd7 8.f4 Ne4 9.Nxd5 Qa5+ 10.Nc3 Nxc3 11.Qd2 Nxe5 12.dxe5 0:1

 Hope you enjoyed todays session. Tell me in the comments if you found the exercises too hard or maybe even too simple.

Merry Christmas, your Brah Brahsen.

edit: Here you find the solutions in white colour:

1) 5... d4 with Qa5+ as the next move to pick up the knight on e5.

2) 9... Qd1 #

3) 9... Bg4 ! 10.Qxg4 Ne3+

4) 9... e5-e4 winning a piece

5) 9... c2 !

6) 9... Nb6! wins the bishop on d3

7) 12... Bb4 

8) 12... Ng3+ 13.hxg3 Qh5#

9) 11... Nxd4 12.Bxd4 Bh6 or also 11... Bh6 win

10) 12... Qd5 !

part 3 will come tomorrow :-)

Okay!