Skyrocket Your Calculation Skills (1)

A super effective tool - Blindfold exercises

Hello everyone, one of the most effective ways that made my calculation skills and OTB rating improve extremly rapidly was doing blindfold exercises. If you take the time to solve all the exercises I am going to post in this topic and in the next topics that are coming the next days you will surely make massive progress too.

How do blindfold exercises work?

You will be given a series of moves played in a game, usually these moves were played in real OTB games. But not the complete notation of the game will be shown, the final moves are missing and your job is to find the best/winning moves that ended the game. That means you play through the given game moves in your head without moving pieces on a board and then try to find the final winning move(s). Note that it will be tougher from exercise to exercise.

Let´s go!

1) 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nd4 4.Nxd4 cxd4 5.d3 0:1

2) 1.e4 Nc6 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.g3 e5 4.Nf3 Bc5 5.Nxe5 Nxe5 6.d4 0:1

3) 1.c4 e6 2.Nf3 d5 3.d4 c6 4.g3 Bd6 5.b3 Nd7 6.Ba3 0:1

4) 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.Nxe5 Qd4 6.0-0 Qxe5 7.Nc3 Bd6 8.Na4 0:1

5) 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 g6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Be3 Nf6 6.Nc3 Bg7 7.Bc4 Qb6 8.Nce2 0:1

6) 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 Ng4 4.Bf4 Nc6 5.Nf3 Bb4+ 6.Nbd2 Qe7 7.a3 Ngxe5 8.axb4 0:1

7) 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 d4 4.e3 Bb4+ 5.Bd2 dxe3 6.Bxb4 0:1

8) 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 c6 3.e3 Nf6 4.Nc3 Bf5 5.cxd5 cxd5 6.Qb3 Qd7 7.Ne5 Qc7 8.d4 e6 9.Bb5+ Nbd7 10.g4 Bxg4 1:0

9) 1.e4 c6 2.Nf3 d5 3.exd5 cxd5 4.Ne5 Nc6 5.d4 Nf6 6.Bb5 Qb6 7.Bxc6+ bxc6 8.0-0 e6 9.c3 c5 10.Bg5 Ne4 1:0

10) 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nc3 e6 4.e3 Nf6 5.Nf3 Nbd7 6.Bd3 dxc4 7.Bxc4 b5 8.Bd3 a6 9.e4 Bb7 10.e5 Nd5
 11.Nxd5 cxd5 12.Bd2 Nb6 13.b3 Be7 14.h4 O-O 1-0

All the games are real games played in OTB chess, the last one is one of my games on this website.

Hope you enjoyed, see you tomorrow with the next one!

Brah Brahsen

One tactic exercise for the end, see you tomorrow!

will try this, thx

Ill try, great keep it up!

wait,was these excersises made up by u, or by someone on else?

First one is...

Qa5

Sorry I am just so proud of myself!

Anyway, excellent idea.  Really should help one's visualization and calculation.

Vesely-Pachman, Prague 1951 seems the biggest blunder of this game came on move 35 which doesn't include any annotations when white played Rc1 instead of Kb3... still probably losing for white but could have been a much better move

Wow i was actually amazed at myself by being able to see it. I didn't close my eyes though, was I supposed to?

No you dont need to close your eyes. Glad you all liked it, next part easier or tougher exercises or both? And did anyone get the last exercise right?

This forum wont go away mr pizzaman. Next exercises will come tomorrow.

lol sure Bobby next part i will add a section only for you :)

thank you for doing this IANM.  I struggled, mostly because I can't picture the coordinates well, yet.

Did you mean next week?

Hi I am back in town after some serious travelling brahs. Will upload these blindfolds again..

WB!

part 2 is up friends

tnx..

these are good tips