Blindfold chess training

Hello out there! I'm an avid chess player, and an equally avid blindfold chess player.  I'm working on my ability to play simulltaneous blindfold chess games.  Here is a link to my commentary on my first attempt to play 8 simultaneous blindfold games. I played 2 against chessmaster X, 1 against shredder on my mac, then between my ipad, ipod and iphone I played 5--3 boards were tchess pro, and 2 were running stockfish.  The whole affair lasted about 6 hours, far less time than I anticipated, though the results weren't that impressive.  The video can explain better, but basically I'm playing "touch move" with these machines, and when I came back around to one of the boards, I thought I had played my queen back, but apparently I input another move I'd been contemplating.  Alas, I was demoralized and proceeded to blitz out the remaining moves on the remaining boards.  To my surprise, I could remember lots of details about the rest of the boards, still, I lost 7 out of 8 and won on one of the boards.  Here's that link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmkFkKGr1RY&feature=plcp

I realized I could trust myself a bit better after blitzing out the remaining moves on those 7 other boards, and so I decided to start training every day by playing a blitz blindfold chess game.  Here is a video commentary on that game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap-bphDqz5k&feature=plcp

Any thoughts?

Only one: What pain medication are you taking after this session?

Hahaha!!  It was really exhausting.  I can only imagine that you get used to the strain the more you do it.

Alchemind you seem to be on a trolling streak. Stop trashing this guys obvious dedication for the game as well as carlsens talent . Roderick i salute you perserverance, this obviously took a lot of effort and time. Good games!

Playing blindfold chess is a special talent and kudos to you. But you have a relatively low rating--so do not forget to learn more of the basics to improve your chess and blindfold chess.

Hey, ponz111.  You're absolutely right.  I'm constantly reminded that my ability to play blindfold simultaneous games will only ever be weaker than my chess ability overall.  This 8-board simul was the first time I'd tried that many boards.  The most I'd previously attempted was 4 boards.  Still, There's no reason I should've fallen victim to some of the blunders I fell for except that I need to be more patient, and bump up my study of the game concurrent with the blindfold skill itself.  

LorencHoxha, I believe Shredder on mobile devices does not support a blindfold mode.  I have the free version on my iphone and it does not have it.  But, the version of Shredder I have on my mac does support blindfold.  If you go to preferences and select piece type invisible both, you can practice blindfolded that way.  I just made the following video today.  It's a live blindfold blitz game inspired by Peter Lalic's videos.  To save you some time, I set up the blindfold mode in Shredder right at the beginning of the video.  Maybe that will help:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpeoSxyt_4I&feature=plcp

It is really great that you can play blindfold and more than one game at once.

It is ok and try to increase your blindfold capability also.

But give at least equal priority to improving your over all chess as

no matter how many blindfold games you play now--you will mostly be defeated by players who are better players and thus you will only do well in blindfold against relatively weak opposition.

ponz111, you're absolutely right.  It's true that I will only do well in blindfold against relatively weak opposition, but I believe that is the nature of a simul, blindfold or not.  GMs don't play each other in simuls for that reason.  Carlsen played a 10-board blindfold simul that was shown on 60 minutes.  Some of his opponents were kids!  Interesting...

My overall chess regimen includes the following daily:

15 minute blindfold chess game

intermediate drills with chessmaster

50 tactical problems on Chess tactics server

a handful of blitzgames

analyze those games for improvements in every area of the game, opening, middle game and endgame.  When I find a thematic weakness, I try to shore it up.

This is the regimen I've come up with and it seems to work for me.  Blindfold chess simuls isn't what I do more of the time, but it is actually my preferred chess 'variation'.  I don't mean to just try to defend the fact that I do study the game and have been studying it for years.  I'm just not going to wait until I reach my ratings goal to start taking this variation very seriously.

At move 13 on board 6 I thought I had moved my queen to a better square, but then discovered that it wasn't there.  When I discovered it wasn't there, and had lost it, I resigned the game, and blitzed out all the rest of the moves on the rest of the boards, still going one board at a time.  I didn't take time to check to see whether the moves were good, I just moved quickly, without thinking very much.  I know why most of my moves were bad after that.  The really interesting thing to me was that I felt like giving up on *all* the boards after losing on one, but it was going fairly well up to that point, so I had no reason to throw those games. It's interesting to me because I hear great players like Nakamura talk about trying to turn around his focus when he's lost a game in a major tournament.  This is probably the closest I've come to feeling like that.  Feeling like I had blown all 8 games with this one game.  haha!  no pain, no gain, though.  I believe that is the real lesson of this blindfold simul, try to invest less emotionally in the overall result, either 8-0 or 7-1 or even 6-2, and to try to balance my emotions by simply taking time out when my evaluation changes from winning the simul to drawing it or even losing.  Here is the source of the very inspiring Anand quote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSOw1Yk_RQU&feature=share

I just worry if I put on a blindfold, they might wheel out a firing squad.  That would show me...

haha:)

I cant play in blindfold beyond 10 moves :(

You must be a strong player if you can play a blindfold simul

I just played another 8-board blindfold simul.  This one went much better than the last because I was more diligent between moves about recording the state of the board.  I also took some time to 'scan' the whole simul to compare games with each other.  Very pleasant simul.  I lost 3, and had to stop playing in order to attend the FSU chess club, but ended up with winning positions on the remaining 5 boards when I stopped playing.  It's coming along!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJyblG3IA2g&feature=plcp

I can play many blindfold (up to 15) games until opponent go away of opening book 

Hey Roderick Gorby, does playing blindfold chess really help you??? im planning to do so because i want to improve my calculation skills, but i heard some people said playing blindfold chess is useless and just causes headache

Hey, guys!  Sorry to take so long to write about this again.  I saw a few questions having to do with the effect of blindfold chess on the real otb game.  In my opinion, and in my experience, Successfully getting through a game or two of blindfold chess can be a bit misleading in terms of how it will help with calculation otb or visualization in general.  One thing, for sure, I'm much better at x-ray tactics now than I was before.  Playing blindfold permits you to selectively see whatever part of the board you want, even "seeing through" pieces on it.  

I just played in the u1500 section of the Southern Open in Orlando, FL.  I tied for first in my section.  I used visualization throughout all my games, except for a few moves, which I would come instantly to regret (I had assumed that the continuations I'd been looking at were good enough).  But there was hardly a move that occured on the board that I hadn't seen in my visualization (there were 4 or 5 of these sorts of surprises, mostly all bad for me!) Based on this experience and other experiences, I can say the following:

pros:

full blindfold chess games does improve stamina at the board, and stamina with regard to visualization for long stretches of time.  

blindfold tactics problems help tremendously, perhaps even more than the blindfold games themselves.  To work on those, I recommmend obtaining a database tactical problems in FEN format, and working through them.  It seems a little daunting, I'd recommend starting with mate-in-1 fen problems, and moving up from there.

cons:

not too many, one con is that it takes a lot of time to practice a blindfold simul.  the flipside of that is that blindfold chess can improve your stamina.

I switched my blindfold chess studies to primarily solving FEN tactical problems and playing 1 15-minute blindfold game against Stockfish per day.  I haven't one a single game, yet, though the rating is set at 1330.  I make a lot of stupid mistakes in those blitz blindfold games and it feels a bit like learning to play chess all over again.  My little theory is that it sort of is  like learning to play chess all over again, and I'll just have to go through all of these little bumps in the road along the way to improvement.  This isn't that much of a "con" though, in my book.  

best,

RG

I started blindfold chess yesterday just to see how far i can go...i have to admit it is hard....i even did not capture a free queen,...but i think i will improve on time...the furthest i went without calling a move which was illegal to the position i moved about 10 to 12 times...i have to say that i am proud of me and will do my best to play more and more every day...any suggestions?