get the book Chess Mazes by Alberson. Absolutely nothing helps more than by going through those puzzles. Not your typical puzzle book though, sort of hard to explain, but it really works.
How does that help with blindfold chess or visualization?
blindfold chess ithink does help.
Hey Chris007, what board on youtube video do you use? It's nice!
Karl, I think you must be concentrated, and play a lot. (IMO)
blindfold chess ithink does help.
Your youtube video has nothing about blindfold chess or how to improve at blindfold chess, or anything about developing visualization skills...
You are simply reviewing one of your games! (which was a blindfold game, incidentally)
Thanks for trying to help me, but I need something targetted at the topic of visualization.
The beginning explains about a way to improve visualization skills by using semi blindfold, the game review being an example showing how one of them go. Sorry about that.
@MSC it is Fritz13
Can you explain what semi-blindfold is?
Thanks. 
Thanks, would also be interested in hearing people's own personal experiences with visualization and how they improved at it.
My coach is having me do blindfold chess. Also, there are some books that help with this.
Such as? "Chess Mazes"??
I'm rated 1950, so maybe that book isn't for me...
I'm trying to improve my visualization in really deep tactical situations, not just "find the mate in 3" stuff..
I can see about 4-5 moves ahead, then I'm getting major static and interference when I try to push more moves further. It is as if my brain just can't push that far, the position becomes a bit blurry and unclear.
Some have suggested blindfold chess can help with this.
What ways would you train visualization, and how would you approach blindfold chess training?
In Tisdall's book "Improve Your Chess Now" he says when you reach your limit or it starts to get to that fuzzy part, "burn" that position into your mind's eye (memorize it basically) and then go from there. If you get lost, you don't have to start over from the board position, you can re-start the analysis from that "stepping stone" position.
I sort of did this by accident. I went though the tests in Emms "The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book" and used the full time limit of, IIRC, 2 hours for (IIRC) 16 puzzles. The first few were warm up puzzles, and you could do in a few minutes, and got harder as you went along. There were something like 12 of these things, so it took a few weeks to finish them.
Anyway, what I did was calculate everything until I was satisfied with my answer, and only then write down my answer. (no writing and then re-calculating using your notes as help). Because you would get a better score on the test by noticing the points of different variations.
So to do this you had to find not just your best moves, but their best tries at defense, so you had to be able to hold a position e.g. 3 moves deep in your head, and "look around" at different possibilities from there before deciding what move 3.5 would be.
This is why blindfold helps, because to analyze any position, you have to first "memorize" the current position to keep it separate from the analysis positions. It's just like Tisdall's stepping stone technique.
This is why blindfold helps, because to analyze any position, you have to first "memorize" the current position to keep it separate from the analysis positions. It's just like Tisdall's stepping stone technique.
Best response so far, thanks! 
Of course, "burning the position" into your mind is the hard part... when you try and do this, often looking at the board makes it harder because the pieces are on different squares.
If you try and visualize the board, my mind isn't visual enough to draw a perfect 2-D picture of 64 squares. Some have suggested breaking it into 8x8 quadrants, but still difficult.
But the stepping stone idea is definitely a key part of this process...
Yeah, the board is definitely a distraction
I remember moving my eyes around the diagram reminding myself "a rook is here, this square is empty, his bishop moved over there" and then I'd try to analyze... and forget the position. So now I re-calculate, re-remind myself, start to look around... and crap where was his bishop? Re-calculate etc haha. To improve on this method I started making more use of visualization (explained below).
Because this was inefficent, I found that I started to do "slow" calculation instead of blitz calculation e.g. I'm sure you can see 3 moves ahead very very fast when looking at captures on 1 square. e.g. "takes, takes, takes, takes, takes and material is even"
What I called my "slow calculation" broke this habit and did a full stop to calculation after each half move. So now it went like this: "takes" and then stop! and I'd look around for any reasonable move as if I were the opponent after I'd just played that move. Any trickery possible besides a re-capture? No? Ok "takes" and now stop! Look around...
This is the distinction Tisdall makes between calculation and visualization. When you're playing blitz and you look at "move, move, move, move, move, move and he has a backrank mate so I can't do that" that's just calculation, you're not stopping to visualize anything until the very end. What I started doing without knowing what I was doing was visualizing every half move.
Again this is what blindfold chess does, it forces you to visualize, or hold that new position in your mind's eye, every single half move :)
All this to say, if you find his stepping stone technique difficult, try visualizing or "burning it into your minds eye" more often. With blindfold you can be doing it every half move. Or with puzzles like I was doing you can do it as you feel is necessary.
Of course you can also do this by playing over games from a magazine or book (or online). Don't use a board to help you, and try to make it to the next diagram.
Or if you just have a game score, do every 5 or 10 or 15 or whatever moves, then set up what you have in your head on the board. Now play over the game on a separate board and check yourself. Probably easier to do on a computer where you can make use of multiple windows :)
Many thanks...
Definitely find this the most challenging skill in chess... once I can do this accurately at 10-15 moves, I think I'd be able to solve just about any tactical or endgame diagram..
Read Kotov, "Think Like A Grandmaster." Also, try reading chess books (I mean the game scores and analyses) without using board and pieces. Follow a game from the diagrams as far as you can.
Visualisation is innate skill like Tal's. It cant be cultivated! If yes, everyone would become GM easily!
Visualisation is innate skill like Tal's. It cant be cultivated! If yes, everyone would become GM easily!
I never believe rubbish like this.
You are right by the way, there is a big difference between calculation and visualization... people think they are the same thing but they are completely different!
One is thinking of moves, and another is actually seeing a position visually..
Interesting but important difference..
I can see about 4-5 moves ahead, then I'm getting major static and interference when I try to push more moves further. It is as if my brain just can't push that far, the position becomes a bit blurry and unclear.
Some have suggested blindfold chess can help with this.
What ways would you train visualization, and how would you approach blindfold chess training?