Re:Magnus Carlsen Repeats at World Chess Championship
by petegrif on Sunday November 23, 2014 @10:49PM
(#8650976)
IT sounds like an incredible feat even if you are a serious/competitive chess player. And whilst it is indeed the case that 'at a certain level almost anybody can play a decent blindfolded game' that level is high.
Re:Magnus Carlsen Repeats at World Chess Championship
by ghshephard on Monday November 24, 2014 @04:25AM
(#8651597)
I have a colleague at work who plays blindfold chess with his nine year old son on road trips. Well, it's not actually blindfold chess, neither of them are wearing blind folds - they just are able to play games without a board, which, if you think about it, is pretty amazing.
Re:Magnus Carlsen Repeats at World Chess Championship
by Tloewald on Monday November 24, 2014 @08:56AM
(#8652346)
You just hope that the son doesn't make an especially brilliant move and cause a car accident.
[deleted]
Re:Magnus Carlsen Repeats at World Chess Championship
by muyuu on Monday November 24, 2014 @06:33AM
(#8651924)
I can play blindfolded and I'm nowhere near Kramnik. I've been around 17 hundreds in ELO when I played the most. I usually beat my beginner family members playing blindfolded against them.
I don't think about individual pieces placed in a board but rather interactions and moves. Pieces are not located at random, you can remember where pieces are because you remember the plans, the threats and the moves that lead to a setup. If I had to remember seemingly random arrangements of pieces it would be a completely different story and much harder.
Might help that I also played Shogi rather intensely and after being used to Shogi, the chess board feels very small.
Playing a game blindfolded seems like incredible feat if you are not serious/competitive chess player. Playing several sounds like magic. The thing is though that at certain level almost anybody can play decent blindfolded game, especially vs much weaker opponent. Playing several takes some practice but it's mainly connected with not being confused (anchoring positions to something so it's easy to switch). It's really not that much more taxing on the brain as chess players have tons of positions memorized anyway. I am talking about 2-3-4 games. 10 is already very impressive to me and things like 20+ is insane even for competitive chess player standards.