Board visualization???!?

Hi, I read that an important skill is board visualization, for example being able to say color of a square without looking at the chessboard, how can I improve this skill?

I also would like to develop this skill, IM Rensch has a great video on the subject!

saying color is easy you can number letters a-1  b-2 ,if the piece is on the h5

calculate h (h=8)     8+5=13 if odd number that means color is black,instead of founding colur of square actually visualazation of the board is important but that is too hard :D i am not able to do that

My advice is not to worry about this too much. I believe one pretty much improves visualization by improving at chess. This skill is strongly linked to calculation of variations so tactic exercises where you have to calculate few moves ahead should improve it.

Yes, but I find that I have poor chess visualization, for example, sometimes I don't see if my queen is hanging and a bishop can takes it because I have some problem visualizin diagonals for example

h5 is white.

Play slow games where you have a long time to study the board, this is how you get better at seeing the whole board.  It's difficult for everyone when they begin.  Over time it gets better.  Solving tactical puzzles can help.

I don't think knowing the colors of the squares helps at all.  Maybe that helps if you want to play blindfold chess.

Do you suggest me to set up a real board when playing turn based instead of studying on 2d screen? This can help me?

Agreed, it's difficult for everyone at the begining.

Being able to visualise the board (including colours of the squares) can be usefull I believe, but it's related to other chess skills. You can easily find tactical exercises whose solving will also increase your visualization skills whereas it's harder to find exercises aimed merely at the visualization and those that do might be aimed at more advanced players.

You can certainly do that by arithmetic means but that's almost certainly useless skill when playing chess. Only "real" visualization can help.

I believe the point is that you have to know them instinctively, rather than working them out with an algorithm. There was some discussion on this on the comments to IM Rensch's video, IM Rensch contributed to this discussion.

There is a site where you can test yourself at this, see  http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-visualizer-square-colors.php

I believe I know the colours but my best time for this is over 21 secs (the test is to identify the colour of 25 squares). Maybe I'm just too slow on the mouse. 

Yes, set up a real board when playing turn based (I don't know why it's called that). I don't do it very much but I'm going to now that my average opponent is getting much stronger. The way I see it your real tournament games are on a regular board so........

I've heard this square-color memorization nonsense for years. I don't know what color any square is aside from e1, d1, e8 & d8. What good would it do anyone to memorize or even systematize this worthless information?

Two words: Blindfold Chess

Board visualization is an incredibly powerful concept.

It's the ability to calculate a line and see the board in your head as if it was in front of you.

This is not simply improving...it's reaching a whole new level of chess. A person who can play blindfold games would totally annihilate a person who cannot do that, for the visualization power allows you to see variations deeper, faster, and more accurately.

This is something to look at when you're 1600-1700 OTB though. If the OPs has problems hanging his queen, this is not the solution for him. It's like taking a bazooka to kill a mosquito.

Training this visualization skills is seriously hard work. Knowing the colour of the squares is just a basic building block.

If you have chess board in front of you you can probably get some clues looking at it, so maybe it's not that vital but I could still imagine it can be somewhat helpfull if you know the colours instinctively(if you need to spend time working this out it's not gonna work). Several concepts in chess are related to the colours like good and bad bishops or wrong bishops in the ending.

In general, I think visualization comes into play for example when evaluating the resulting position of long calculated line. Unless the result is completely obvious (say checkmate) you have to try to evaluate the resulting position  and then compare it to other possible lines. In order to do that one must be order to visualize the arising position accurately and see for example if there are any new weak squares or like.

this is more a problem of bad board vision. this will improve with playing a lot of games and doing a lot of tactical exercises.

I'd also like to have good visualization skills, especially for reading chess books. I have to go through all the variations on a board and move the pieces forth and back, pretty annoying because I often lose track. I'd like to see those moves in my head.

I'm a bit sceptical if knowing the colors of the sqares will improve this, but nevertheless I'm playing this color-telling-game often when I'm in the train or in the bus or walking etc. we'll see if this helps with anything :)

I think my main problem with this has always been a kind of directional dyslexia: I have never been able to tell right from left without thinking very hard about it. So when they say "White on the right" to orient the board, I have to stop and strain to figure out which side is right.