Wait, how do you have a hat on your chess.com flair??? Can I have one? Oh and by the way, the comment was nice!
How Practicing Blindfold Chess Boosted My Visualization

Wait, how do you have a hat on your chess.com flair??? Can I have one? Oh and by the way, the comment was nice!
It's not a flair, it's displayed beside their profile picture because they're a Chess.com Staff member.

yeah, back in 7th grade, i had played blindfold for the first time against my classmates in chess class (i was the best one, 1600 USCF at the time, surpassing the chess teacher) for the first 10 moves)
my visualization did quite improve
Not gonna lie, my first blindfold games were a disaster. I hung queens, dropped pieces like hot potatoes, and basically played hide and seek with my pawns. But I didn’t quit.
To fix my visualization, I started training coordinates—first on Chess.com’s Vision Trainer, then on Lichess’s coordinate trainer. It felt silly at first (“What color is g6?” bruh...), but over time, it seriously helped. I also began solving easy puzzles blindfolded—nothing fancy, just enough to build clarity.
Now? I can play full blindfold rapid games of 10:15 time control around 1000 strength and calculate deeper in classical games too. Still blunder sometimes... but at least now I see it coming 😅

I played blindfold chess before, and I had the same trouble keeping the position in my head, but I have gotten better. It helped me calculate positions in my head when I only looked at the board a few times, and with my visualization. I really like the idea behind it and this forum topic was very informative.

I have only played a couple blindfold games and I played horribly. I believe it's something I really need to begin focusing on since I'm 2000+ strength and can't even follow a game by the notations. If I can advance my level on that then I think it would improve my chess rating somewhat significantly.
Thread by: @2quire
Hey everyone,
I wanted to share something that's had a huge impact on my chess improvement lately—blindfold training.
A few months ago, I realized that while I could calculate short variations, I struggled to hold positions clearly in my mind. So I decided to try something that always seemed a bit intimidating: blindfold chess.
At first, I started small—just hiding the board and replaying simple checkmates or famous miniatures from memory. Then I moved on to reading annotated games without diagrams, trying to follow along purely from the moves. It was tough, and honestly a bit frustrating at times, but I stuck with it.
Over time, something clicked. My visualization started improving—not just in blindfold, but in regular games too. Now, I can picture a few moves ahead much more clearly. I'm also better at spotting tactical patterns and planning deeper.
The biggest surprise? I actually started enjoying it. Blindfold practice feels like solving a puzzle with your brain alone. It's helped me build confidence in my calculation and taught me to trust my inner board.
I’m curious—has anyone else tried blindfold training? If so, how did it help your game? If you haven’t yet, I really recommend giving it a shot!
Looking forward to hearing your experiences.
wow, i think this is related on the top blog blindfold

idk why but i have never needed to practice calculation i have always been good at it to some extent.
Where can I practise blindfold chess
You can play it on chess.com. If you are asking about practicing visualization then go to vision trainer on chess.com https://www.chess.com/visionIf you want to play blindfold then you can go to settings and change pieces into blindfold. That will hide all your pieces and you can play blindfold chess.

Great topic
Some crazy stuff happens after a few moves into the game for some players-
The traded pieces respawning on their starting squares again and again
Castling over the bishop on f1/f8 lol

I have been working on my calculation a lot recently, and recently I played an entire blindfold game against my sister and won.

I just wanted to put out here: I have aphantasia (I cannot see images in my mind - it does not mean that I can’t imagine them there, I just can’t visualize them; “the computer is running but the monitor is turned off”), and I have struggled some with chess visualization. Still, I’ve found some really helpful tools that I believe aphants and weak visualizers alike could benefit from. I’d highly recommend reading this article and looking into some of his suggestions! https://dontmoveuntilyousee.it/aphantasia/

Blindfold training is tough but a really interesting tool, I have friends that got their best rating improvement from this type of training, it helped me too, and I will implement it again in my training routine. I recommend everyone doing so.

This is a Game I played blindfold and It was really interesting, because they deviated from what I am used to, they went for the Vienna, thinking a lot I could manage to remember all my prep so I got a good position, my problem, I didn't remember accurately where my pieces were, and I had really little time with no increment, so I had to speed Up and I went for a tactic without really knowing if It worked and It absolutely didn't, because the pieces were not where I thought they were
So a recommendation if you want to play blindfolded against people that are not blindfolded, play with an increment so you can focus just on the Game and don't have to get worried about the time situation as much
Thread by: @2quire
Hey everyone,
I wanted to share something that's had a huge impact on my chess improvement lately—blindfold training.
A few months ago, I realized that while I could calculate short variations, I struggled to hold positions clearly in my mind. So I decided to try something that always seemed a bit intimidating: blindfold chess.
At first, I started small—just hiding the board and replaying simple checkmates or famous miniatures from memory. Then I moved on to reading annotated games without diagrams, trying to follow along purely from the moves. It was tough, and honestly a bit frustrating at times, but I stuck with it.
Over time, something clicked. My visualization started improving—not just in blindfold, but in regular games too. Now, I can picture a few moves ahead much more clearly. I'm also better at spotting tactical patterns and planning deeper.
The biggest surprise? I actually started enjoying it. Blindfold practice feels like solving a puzzle with your brain alone. It's helped me build confidence in my calculation and taught me to trust my inner board.
I’m curious—has anyone else tried blindfold training? If so, how did it help your game? If you haven’t yet, I really recommend giving it a shot!
Looking forward to hearing your experiences.