Chess toEnjoy
Jeepers,Creepers: WhoNeeds ThosePeepers?
When it comes to one chess skill that ‘outsiders’ considermysterious, most of us underestimate our abilities.
By GMAndy Soltis Of all the creatures on this planet,
chessplayers are among the least likely to be accused of modesty. But there’s one skill in which we underestimate our- selves. Believe it or not, it’s blindfold chess. I suspect that you are better at blind-
fold than you think. In fact, I’d bet that at least a third of Chess Life readers can play through a game score mentally. Furthermore, I’d wager that a substan-
tial number of readers can play their own game without sight of the board. A smaller group can play more than one blindfold game simultaneously. And there are some —well, like Hikaru Nakamura—who can play 10 boards blind. I know what you’re going to say: “Not
me. I can’t picture the entire board in my mind.” But almost no one does that in blindfold chess—or in any other type of chess, for that matter.
Focus on those quads GM Loek van Wely (FIDE 2683) GM Vassily Ivanchuk (FIDE 2750) Melody Amber (blindfold) 2007
+ pn+ pp p p r +
p +Pp + +P+l+ q PP+LP + LN+ +Rp R + Q +K
After 26. Qe1
This could be a Black-to-play-and-win position from our monthly quiz. Before reading on, cover up the next paragraph and try to solve it. Black “saw” that White’s last move
threatens 27. Qxh4. He also saw that 26. ... Qxe1+ doesn’t lead anywhere. But he found that 26. ... Bxg2+ 27. Kxg2 h1=Q+! leads to a forcedmate (28. Qxh1 Qg4+ or 28. ... Rf2+).
12 Chess Life — July 2011 + + rk+ Now if you saw all that—or even a frac-
tion of it—you may have noticed how your attention was focused on the lower right corner of the board. You probably paid no attention at all to the knight at d7 or White’s queenside pieces, not to men- tion the distant pawns. You may have looked at only 16 squares, on the e- to h- files. That’s no surprise. An experienced player—even with full sight of the board —typically focuses on a portion of it at any given moment. Of course, he’ll look at the rest of the squares before choosing a move. But even then he isn’t studying 64 squares at once. The Russian psychologist ViktorMalkin
said the inability to take in the entire board, with eyes wide open, explains why amaster canmiss a “long”move. He cited the gameMarshall-Tchigorin,Monte Carlo 1902. It went 1. d4 d5 2. c4 Nc6 3. Nc3 dxc4 4. d5 Na5 5. Bf4 Bd7? 6. e4 e6 7. dxe6 fxe6?? 8. Qh5+! and White wins because of 9. Qxa5. In fact, that’s a good game to test your-
self with: Try to imagine the position that arises after 1. d4 d5 2. c4 Nc6 I suspect almost all readers can do that if they concentrate. The nextmove is 3. Nc3 Take amoment
to see if you can visualize the board then. You can? Then add 3. ... dxc4. Go slowly and don’t try to see an entire board. Add 4. d5 and, when that’s in your
head, 4. ... Na5. If I asked where the four knights are,
many, if notmost readers, should be able to answer correctly if they went one knight at a time. Now add 5. Bf4. Think about it before
youmake the 5. ... Bd7move. If you take your time you might be able to visualize each of the four bishops. A blindfold player just keeps adding
one half-move at a time to his mental picture until he gets to the end of the game. Even people who wouldn’t be con- sidered serious about chess can do that. The artist JuanMiro claimed he played
chess just as well “blind” as he did with his eyes wide open. Miro said he devel-
oped this ability thanks to a painting teacher who trained him to draw objects Miro held in his hand while literally blind- folded. Another amateur, William Weld, the
former Massachusetts governor, said he could handle four blindfold games simul- taneously, at least up to the 20th move. And consider Pierre Trudeau, the Cana- dian prime minister of the 1970s. When Trudeau was on a diplomatic
tour of Soviet cities he invited Roger Lemelin, the editor of the Canadian news- paper La Presse, along. Lemelin, a prime mover of the spectacular Montreal 1979 tournament, was a real chess fan. To kill time during a city-to-city hop, he asked Trudeau if he played chess, according to Lemelin’s biographer, Real Bertrand. It turned out Trudeau knew a lot about
the game. But there was no set aboard the plane. So they played blindfold. “The jour- nalists around us watched with surprise as the two of us, like robots, arms folded, motionless, eachminute solemnly spoke strange formulas: d4, f5,” Lemelin said. They each won one game. It’s been claimed that blindfold chess
puts somuch of a strain on themind that exhibitions were banned in the Soviet Union. But one of the greatMoscow play- ers, Fyodor Duz-Khotimirsky, recalled in his memoirs that he gave several simuls of up to 17 boards in the 1920s. He shrugged off the strain. “A serious tour- nament game often demands more expenditure of nervous energy than a 12- to-15 board blindfold exhibition,” he wrote. Here’s a position from one of his 10-board simuls:
Mate in seven Fyodor Duz-Khotimirsky Trublenkov Tula 1910
(see diagramtop of next column) Duz-Khotimirsky said he agreed with
one of his tournament opponents, Akiba Rubinstein, who told himthat seeing the pieces actually hinders a person’s combi-
uschess.org
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