Played a Blind Player at the Southern

I was not there ... too far from Portugal but a very good friend of mine was there playing in the under 2100 section. This weekend he is playing in Raleigh NC. 

the game we were wanting to post was your epic blunder, but you can go ahead and post the last rd too =P

Ya, it's got to be tough to play chess blind.  I can't imagine the challenge.  One wrong visual projection, and POOF! there goes your Q.

It's harder psychologically, for me anyway, to face these kids that are 10 years old and 500 points underrated... or some number of hundred points, you never know.

Some recent comments seem to have the misconception that a blind player is doing something similar to playing blindfolded. In fact, the blind player has a board with pieces that they can touch during the game. So, they can check the location of the pieces on a physical board. This is quite different from a blindfold player who is required to remember the locations of all the pieces.

I disagree. The most critical aspect of playing blindfold is that you must remember the correct location of all the pieces. A blind player has the ability to check the positions of the pieces at any time by feeling them on a physical board -- this is exactly analogous to a sighted player looking at the pieces.

A sighted player is accustomed to having information available visually and this is taken away when they play blindfolded. A blind player is accustomed to having information available through touch and this is not taken away in their regular games.

 Actually, I had my Knight dancing all over his side of the board because I thought that Knights would give hime the most problems.

BUT.. what I meant by playing the board  and not him... I should not assume he might  miss something because he was blind.. he actually saw " a nasty dicovered attack along a long diagonal".

Do blind people even get visual projection? If they are born blind they may not be able to because they don't have any knowledge of what visual really is because they were never able to experience it. If anyone knows any blind person I would be very interested to know this.

 The player I played..Henry... lost his sight gradually. 10 years ago.. the tumor finally took the sight from his remaining good right eye

OK, now that this topic has dove-tailed into several others, let me address a few items.

• I had lunch with the blind player and his friend, who also played at the tourney.  The friend was in the 1800+ section.  He explained what Steve already mentioned, that Henry gradually lost his sight over time.  Henry has got to be at least 65-70 years old.  My point is that Henry had sight for most of his life, then lost it, so Visual Projection is something he would have to deal with.
• Also, to address another item that was brought up, Visual Projection is something that a person who normally has their sight deals with when they play chess blind-folded.  The only difference between them and Henry (the blind chess player who is the original subject of this topic) is that Henry gets to touch the pieces on his personal side-board as reference point.  This is fair, since the games are being played in a tournament, not an exhibition.
• A person born blind, who learned how to play chess, would probably be a calculating monster, or else they couldn't play at all.  Chess is all about spatial relationships and puzzle/problem solving (that and a fair amount of creative thinking).  Either a born-blind person has, or can grasp, these concepts/abilities, or they can't.  Without sight, they have to take an entirely different approach than those who have sight, or those who have lived most of their lives with sight, only to lose it in the later stages of life.
• Steve teaches chess to at least a dozen, if not more, middle-school kids.  His kids consistently place well/high in scholastic tournaments, as well as winning against older and higher-rated players.  His ability to "play the board", as well as the understanding of the term is fine.  I know Steve personally, so I can assure you of this.

I was playing someone on chess.com in a 3 minute game. He checkmated me, and later told me that he was blind.

 Jim.. those were some nice comments/ observations

Here in Pretoria  there was a club for sight impaired,(I think they have been assimilated into other clubs recently) and they consistantly placed about halfway in the B division.

It was always good fun going to the Eye Institute and play a league match against 6 of these pegged boards .

I always thought it was pretty cool that 1500-1600 players get to represnt South Africa ang get sent to Brazil or Italy to play in the Blind Olympiads.

They told me the Blind Russian Olympiad team are all GM strength.

They told me the Blind Russian Olympiad team are all GM strength.

That is amazing

The important thing is that you've learnt your lesson and will be less arrogant in the future.

One of my good friends, once played a blind man in Copenhagen Open, 2009 i believe.

I think its funny to se how blind people can play to, i can imagine it must be hard to play that way.

On the other hand though, blind people are used to do anything in their life blind. Playing chess that way is most definitely harder for people who aren't blind.

exactly

I played against a blind player about 14 years ago.  I was in a section way above my rating and my only win was against the blind player.  From what I remember, he did not blunder but he didn't notice a discovered attack, which left him behind in material during the whole game.  Like you, I also won't forget the experience.  I still have the notation sheet somewhere.