Poor visualisation

Hello. I've realised that this thing holds me and doesn't let me go forward. It doesn't matter how good i'm at calculation or recognising patters if i don't see a chess board clear after move 4-5. Slow games can't help with it at all so don't advice it please. Is there a way to improve it? I'm fed up of staring at board for internity and not finding the correct move.

Yes, one technique that really works for me (though I don't use it as often as I should) is to practise visualisation in isolation from calculation. This is very easy to do and I find it almost instantly effective.

What I do is to take any book - annotated game, magazine, opening book anything, and flick to a middlegame position (or endgame, but middlegame there are more pieces so I find it works better.) Then I simply follow the moves as far as I can without considering calculation or worrying about why they are played, I'm simply working on my visualisation muscle. I simply follow the moves 3 deep, fix the position, then go 3 moves further, fix and so on. I find that I can go quite far. The idea is to go further than you need to so that hopefully, when you are in a real situation and calculating lines, visualisation is not the thing holding you back.

@Bene, that's a great tip and something I do also to train my visualization. I think it is very helpful to isolate visualization training from calculation training until the visualization becomes more second nature.

My favorite exercise in this regard is to work through minatures from the first move until the last diagram (if there is one otherwise just through the last move). This is usually only 15-20 moves. Then I try to find the tactic or winning move that is displayed in the diagram. If I can't solve it from my head, then I set the position up from memory and double check that it is correct and then try to solve the tactic.

For the past 3 months I've also been working on memorizing the board. It took me awhile but now I can rattle off all 64 square colors in about 90 seconds with no mistakes. I've got the "sister squares" memorized and I am now working on getting all the diagonals memorized.

I'm basically just following IM Rensch's Full Board Awareness video.

This is an area where chess is like weight lifting. There is no magic secret. It's work.

You just have to push yourself to visualize N moves ahead on a regular basis. As it gets easier, you visualize N+1 moves ahead.

I memorize the first twenty moves or so of games I'm interested in and replay them in my head.

Some experts and masters say the ability to play blindfold came to them over the natural course of playing and studying hard.

when you are laying in bed and cant sleep or are bored try to visualize a game whether random or one you played . Keep doing it and eventually you should be able to go pretty deep .

Could you elaborate it, please? I'm trying to see the board but it's very hard to achieve.

I wrote about how to go about it here:

http://becomingachessmaster.com/2015/04/25/how-to-improve-your-chess-visualisation-skills/