Ray Charles

Most chess-players are familiar with the consept of blindfold play. It is easy enough to fathom how a person might approach the game of chess should he lose his eyesight for one reason or another. I know I wouldn't give up a dear hobby. Know the shape of the board? Algebraic notation? piece of cake.

Well what if you had lost your sight at the age of five due to glaucoma, and hadn't learned the rules of our fine game yet? I'd suppose most would focus their energy on other activities. Well glaucoma is what stole young Ray Charles of his vision at an early age, at a time when he had barely learned to play with toys without stumbling over every now and again. Insistent as he was, he did learn the rules of chess in his early teenage with the aid of a friend whose name has stayed shrouded in the mists of history.

For those not aware, blind chess is played world wide with a modified chessboard where the black squares are lifted a bit, and white one's accordingly lowered. All of the pieces are pegged and the squares slotted to fit those pegs in, so that while the player is touching his way around the pieces, the position on the board wouldn't change with the pieces flying off the board (It's a bitch to try and scan the floor for a pawn without the benefit of sight). There's several ways to distinguish the black pieces from the white ones, the most common being to flatten the tops of white pieces and sharpening the black ones. Braille print on top of the pieces is another deployed method.

Ray never played in tournaments, but some grandmasters have estimated his elo to be around 1700-1800.

Here is a four knights scotch game, that Ray played against GM Larry Evans:

In 1993 after receiving his last Grammy, he stated in a Los Angeles Times interview: "I'm no Spassky, but I will make it interesting for you"

Wow I did not know that about Ray Charles. Thanks for the post!

Vow!  Me neither! It seems that music is not the only thing that he is good for!

Indeed. I've seen one other annotated game of his a year or two ago, but can't seem to find it now. I'll need to do some research and post it if I get lucky.

Is that were his game with Evans ended?  I know I saw some analysis of it that showed the endgame wasn't so easy and Ray might have had a draw in there.

Anyway yes I knew about the blind board stuff, I played a blind guy in a rated (and sighted) USCF tourney.  He had his board with the raised and lowered squares and pegs for the pieces.  Also the tops of the pieces were rough, I didn't look closely maybe it was braille?  Anyway the TD recommended that I set up my own board beside his so that when he used his hands it wouldn't distract me -- so I did.  He was an older gentleman rated about 1500, he said he used to be an expert.

According to chessgames.com and chessbase, that's where Ray resigned. Maybe it was the missing other game? I vaguely recall it being a draw, but I'm not sure if it was against Evans.

How did your game turn out?

I played into an advance caro and after Bf5 played the Nc3 g4 stuff for a sharp game... not because he was blind but because I liked that line.  He blundered early and got his king trapped in the middle, and although material was even I had a nice advantage -- but he wasn't a bad player, he avoided many tactical pitfalls (not that I ever played for traps) and it nearly entered an endgame, I think he finished 3 or 4 out of 7 games.

The game score I posted in the greatest chess photos thread has Kxc3 Kd5 and finis.

Wow. Yeah that's where the game is supposed to end. Seems like I managed to copy the PNG only partly. Maybe it explains Orangehonda's confusions as well :)

Well, now it's corrected.

ps. Sorry, I didn't know you had posted the game already. I didn't recall seeing it on the forums before.

Oh no problem at all. Considering how much we see dumb things repeated in the forums, great notions like yours above is welcome even if it's not the chess.com debut. Others need to see it too.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/greatest-chess-photos

if you haven't seen this thread before.

edit: For this reason I also don't mind seeing the Morphy Opera Game a few times a year.

What do you mean dumb things get repeated in the forums ?

What do you mean dumb things get repeated in the forums  ?

btw, Reb. Who do you think contributed better stuff to forums: Kasparov or Fischer?

Too much to choose from.

The topics of Who is greatest? or Fischer or Kasparov? or Women can play like men? as well as the idea that Morphy would be 2300 today, and so on.

The Sky is Blue is something we still need to extract the last bit of life out of though.

 Which forums did they contribute to ?

The sky's not blue. Even a child knows that...

<sputter sputter>

Why you....

:D

Fischer was a known troll in the  CFCA - The Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism  during the mid nineties,

and Kasparov even today is not only the 'highest rated kibitzer', but also a loudmouth in the United Civil Front forums, where he announces repeatedly his disbelief towards anything the Kreml announces.

http://www.theotherrussia.org/2010/03/31/united-civil-front-on-metro-bombings-dont-believe-putin/

For once a thread that at least I found highly interesting and worthwhile. Many thanks to bjazz and goldendog.