What Do You See When...

I see. It sounds like it is necessary to create an invalid FEN code to create a diagram of 64 squares without kings.

Oh my! I can see in 3D.  Chess board and chess pieces.

Also, I can bring up, from memory, the 3D look of Chess Titans, as well as the look of a chess.com Live Chess game in 2D. This is very cool. Who needs a chess board?

I started playing chess seriously a few years ago playing Chess Titans. It is quite visual, with squares that light up to let you know where pieces can go, along with 3D like pieces and board. This Chess Titan look has really burned into my brain. I'm going to play with that program some more, for visualization exercises.

So this - r1bq4/1pp5/p1p5/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1 - would be correct?

I purchased that program several months ago. Time to get my monies worth.

Thank you. Dan Hesiman calls it board vision. Here is a sample exercise.

The Knight makes as many consecutive moves as it takes to “capture” the King.

The White king is not present in Dan Heisman's diagram. I'll work on my FEN diagrams to easily eliminate kings.

If you wanna take the kings out of your diagram, just delete the big K and the little k, like so:

NK6/8/8/8/4P1P1/3P2P1/8/7k w - - 0 1 (With kings)

N7/8/8/8/4P1P1/3P2P1/8/8 w - - 0 1 (Without kings)

The numbers are the amount of empty squares on that rank until the next piece, so you would add one to the number to the right of where the K's were (in this case.) The uppercase letters are White and the lower case letters are Black, btw.

I'm very excited about the board vision exercisies I am doing. I even played some chess on my way to work, in my head. Was I a safe driver?  

Once when I went to bed after playing all day in a tournament, I saw a green and white chessboard hovering behind my eyelids.  It didn't go away and was actually quite annoying!

I have also been thinking about what I visualized the few times I have played blindfold chess.  I definitely did not see a nice clear board with nice pieces.  It was more like blurry pieces in darkness.  And instead of the entire board, I only visualized the part of the board where things were happening, although I was usually able to remember where the other pieces were when I needed to.

People tend to learn differently - some are more visual, some verbal, some kinesthetic.  I wonder where most chessplayers fall and whether they visualize differently depending on their learning styles.

Thanks for the insight into what it is like to play a slow game and also, blindfold chess. I have never played a slow game, sadly so. By that, I mean tournament time controls like Game 60 or Game 2 hours. Looking at one big vinyl board for that long, I can understand where you would have the colors white and green stuck in your mind's eye!

1. Ajedrecito said something similar - chunking. So, when you are visualizing the part of the board where things are happening, how can you notice something like a discovered check by your opponent on the far side of the board, as an example?

2. My best guess -  The four modalities of learning: auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and tactile all play some part in the learning of chess, with those who have a strength in visual learning progressing the fastest.

Do blind people play chess? How do they learn the game? I have never given that any thought. I do have some experience in teaching the blind, as I had a few blind students in my band over the years. It was a very rewarding experience.

I also taught violin to a girl who was almost deaf. That was quite a challenge, but also quite rewarding, for the student and the teacher.