I hope I can have synesthesia!
"When psychologist Alfred Binet studied blindfold chess he conducted a survey of leading players. He asked whether they could mentally see the entire board at the same time. "Of course," Siegbert Tarrasch responded. "But it is difficult."
In truth, it is virtually impossible even with eyes wide open.
A player typically examines sectors of the board, perhaps as few as 12 or 16 squares at a time, while considering a tactic. After he has seen what he wants to see, his eyes quickly shift to another sector" (The wisest things ever said about chess- A. Soltis)
Here is an image from the book Blindfold Chess by Eliot Hearst/John Knott (page 181) on the subject matter:
https://imgur.com/Hdq1mb2
So the visualisation is actually more of an abstract logical visualisation process rather than an attempt of simulating physical reality as much as possible. It is rather more about the relationship between pieces, themes, threats, patterns etc. To be honest, i i dont know color of the squares by heart. If u'd wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me spontaneously the color of c5, i'd first ask you "why are u doing this to me?" and gain some time to derive it from the square i know its color like d8 is a dark square so the c5 must be as well because e7-c5. I rather have an abstract image of diagonals/files rather than colors and details of physical appearance.
Why am i speaking about blindfold? How relevant is it actually for the case when we have a full board in front of us? Well, the calculation process, even with the board is very similar to what we do in blindfold: When we play out the moves and calculate stuff, we do it in our minds eye, without moving the pieces. (sometimes it is even distracting to see physical input when calculating, like at the end of your line bishop is supposed to be on e7 but on actual position it is on c5 and it kinda confuses you. This is why you will see players like Naka or Ivanchuk looking to the ceiling sometimes when calculating, to not to get distracted by the actual position) The actual board is then a helper in that process, that it kinda corrects our calculation and visualisation of lines like about where this or that piece can go/move etc. So when we play otb and calculate lines, we kinda always play semi-blindfolded.
This should give you already an idea about how to improve yourself in that aspect of the game: Simply, when you solve puzzles, whether online or on an actual board, never ever move pieces, just don't touch them, just as you are not allowed in a real tournament. Only after you solve or just completely give up on it, play it out on the board.
Some bit more experienced players also like to read chess books like novels, without a board. I also like to do that, especially if i'm feeling lazy lol.
Point is just try to analyse as much as possible without playing out or touching pieces, whether if you are just reading a puzzle solution, or game notation, or computer engine analysis about a certain line. First try to follow them in your head, later to be sure you can play moves out to check if you missed anything in your analysis in your head. I don't know any shortcuts, magic pills or tricks, just practice and as you get more and more experience in playing and such analysis, visualisation will be your second nature!
#12 in this picture the right half of the carpet is how I saw chessboard when I was losing most games to 1400 rated lichess players. The left half of the carpet is how I saw it after 1 year of visualisation training.
Great article about blindfold visualisation.
I never realised we do not see the entire board all the time when we are sighted.
Another way to practice is just to read the notation with invisible pieces, Andrew Tang did that in ultrabullet and won the tournament lol
Opper generally disables notation on the right of a live lichess game, to increase the challenge.
But yeah for ultrabullet speed reading the notation will be crucial.
There are a few players who play variants blindfolded as well, like crazyhouse blindfolded.
One reason that its hard to visualize the whole board is that the human eye has a very narrow focus range. Try opening a book, look at a word and then without shifting your gaze try to figure out what the word is that's 2 words over. It's not in focus! I forget the arcseconds of the human eye focus but its narrow. That's one of the reasons blunders with long range pieces are more common, I think.
As far as blindfold, I've been experimenting with learning not only the colors of the squares, but also what diagonals they are on. There are 26 total diagonals (if you don't count the corner squares as diagonals). For example, c4 is a white square that's on the a2-g8 diagonal that has 7 squares, and also on the a6-f1 diagonal which has 6 squares. Don't know if that will help me but I'm experimenting.
I've also been doing "Chess Mazes" exercises from a book by Bruce Albertson - trying to do those in my head.
Well the thing is we look but we don't see. It's called selective perception. Our focus and perception is shaped not only by the input from outside but from the internal factors such as expectations, anticipation, biases etc. Perception is not a passive but an active process, involving so-called top-down processing (a psychological term that refers to perception that is driven by cognition)
In case of a very little experienced player, blunders might be due to lack of tactical pattern recognition etc.
But in case of an experienced player, blunders are more often a matter of focus. For example a GM blundering a simple fork or mate in 1, is not cuz he needs to solve more mate 1 puzzles but it is a sign of losing focus or being focused on other thing due to anticipation, expectation or having another plan in mind etc.
This topic has been archived and can no longer be replied to.