Blind in many ways

Last week I got together with a friend to do some visualization training, and we finished off by playing a game completely blindfold. No pieces, no board, no scoresheet. This was the first time I'd ever tried this, so I did not expect to do well.

During the game, I was surprised that I managed to keep everything in my head. Remember, this was my first time, so I did not expect getting past more than a handful of moves before making an illegal one. But as it turned out, none of us made any mistakes in that department. However, in terms of quality, none of us played well. But that's another story.

The game ended in a horrible failure on my part. After taking on d5, I was so preoccupied with the idea of opening the diagonal towards the black king, and I made a double mistake. First of all, I played too fast. I only considered the fact that the queen was able to take on g7, and did not pay any attention to where the knight was. Secondly, I did not "see" that the knight protects g7 from e8, i.e. an error of visualization. I even announced the move as checkmate, which it is not -- of course. So once I realized my mistake, I resigned.

I am happy that I managed to play an entire game legally. But I still have to practice a bit more before I can play reasonably well.