Chess Blindfold Visualization

How do you train your visualization ability in chess, and eventually be able to play blindfold? Is this also feasible for a 1000 player?

I wonder for those who can play blindfolded chess, in your mind, what do you see? Do you see something like an online board (e.g. lichess/chess.com board), or picture an actual real-life board. What about the pieces and square colors?

I want to be relevant but ironically the whole blindfold chess thing to me seems super hard so that's all the relevancy I can really offer. 😕

Check out a podcast called Chess visualization with Aiden Rayner. Been practicing this a short while now, too short really to know if it will help, but it ain't hurting. As far as what I see is an interesting question as I never actually thought about it, but I don't see the board itself or pieces/color, my memorization seems to be based on the movement path of the pieces, everyone's probably going to visualize a bit different.

Blindfold Chess and visualisation, I organised a blindfold simul for our chess club with I.M Paul Littlewood, he has done these for quite some years and its fascinating to watch, he sits at a desk puts his blindfold on and asks for silence and few minutes then indicates he is ready to begin, he took on 26 boards and only lost one game, I asked him how he does this, he used the same phrase "visualisation" and said he plays for set positional structures, think to become good at this type of chess you have to train your mindset a certain way to become proficient!?

I started by learning the color of each square in my head. A friend would call out a square and I had to announce the color of that square. Then I did the "Knight tour" where that friend would place a knight on a square, and then move it to a different square and i had to know the color of each square. He would occasionally make a illegal move to see if I would catch it or not.

Then we started playing blindfold chess with each other. Considering all that I was never able to do more than one game at once, but it sure impressed the kids that I worked with.

I am constantly improving thanks to this site best I have seen so far https://darksquares.net/

Oh wow - there is! Thanks for pointing that out! I'm still at the point that I have to take a notation like c6 and manually look at a board to be sure where it is. I have a long long way to go before I get to this level but what a sweet journey!

Playing online (2D) diminishes our third dimension impressions. OTB is a very different game and what you are proposing has less to do with chess and more to do with, say, Zen Buddhism or simply mind control. Your own mind not someone else.

Try waking up every morning and writing down as many details of your dreams as you can remember. This is a cognitive improvement task.

Good luck.

OTB is great, sure, but not everyone has the luxury of a physical board for practice. And practicing visualization is beneficial regardless.

I remember a story long long ago where a famous golfer was captured as prisoner of war (I don't remember the war even). And while in captivity, he visually (only in his mind) played golf. When the war was over, his golf had improved SIGNIFICANTLY. Just sayin ... ;-)

Lichess has a training tool specifically for learning the board that's pretty cool and effective. It's under the learn tab>coordinates.

@WoodPusherInc, thanks I'll check that out too! We have 'visions' here as well! I haven't messed with it for several months and - now that I've rearranged my sidebar, I can't find it! But thank you for the reminders (both for Lichess and for here)!

🧐👍

Very good

thanks for sharing ! its great indeed