Do you use memory techniques for chess?

Hello everyone,

In the past, I have been too lazy to even bother learning and scrutinizing openings, endgames, etc. As I am hoping to somewhat improve my game, I am curious to whether you people use memory techniques as an aid (ie. memory palaces) or if you just...remember it all by brute force or what you will call it. The same applies to those proficient at playing chess blindfolded. Do you just remember or know the board at all given times or do you make use of memory techniques? If so, any specific books that helped you?

The best way to remember is if the move makes sense. Then it's like remembering a character in a story. If you forget, you can just think of the settings and support characters to jog your memory until the character you forgot pops back into your head.

Other than that, I don't use anything fancy like memory palaces (I'm sure you could though). Other than understanding (or attempting to) I just use repetition.

As for blindfold, it's like the movie thing. Patterns of pieces make sense so they're easy to remember. That's why if I play a master I can (usually) reproduce the game a day later without having made any special effort to remember the game and without reviewing the game after it was played... but if I play a beginner and their moves make no sense, I'll almost certainly not be able to reproduce the game even immediately after I played it. Sometimes I'm lucky to remember 10 moves into the game when it's like that.

Carlsen played a blindfold clock simul where the people could announce their moves whenever they wanted (no order to who moved when). This is super impressive. However in one of the events I saw on youtube of him doing this, one of his opponents was really bad and made a lot of random moves. Carlsen admitted after the game that he had the most trouble with that game and actually forgot where half the pieces were.

I guess I wasn't clear about the groups of pieces thing.

Check out

Start at 9:02 to see her succeed in remembering a real chess position
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbjxdOgg-r4

Start at 4:32 to see her fail to remember a random position
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdKHrxcpxrY

Memory "techniques" (chaining, memory room, system of key words, unusual associations ... whatever) are like crutches for people that cannot walk unaided.  If your natural memory is powerful you don't need them, especially if your memories are underpinned by understanding.

 Visualization training is probably what you are looking for. Danny Rensch has a video on it here. I personally have started doing it 2 weeks ago and I can feel improvement while playing. When playing in full senses (not tired or drunk, i.e.), I now see and calculate for the entire board, and not a portion of it where tension is going on.

I never needed any memory aids. I could easily memorise hundreds of variations, ten to fifteen moves deep, because that's what a good memory does. It even helped me understand and play chess when I was learning because it was possible to recall analagous variations. That's why this insistence on learning chess endgame-first can be weak, if it doesn't encourage people to make use of talents they possess. That's why the Russians used it.

Very good ppst from Telestu above ^.

Thanks for all the valuable input! It helps a lot and also makes a lot of sense.