Blindfold Endgame Visualization

50 sjakkoppgaver gitt med først notasjon i stedet for et diagram, eks. nr 1: "N. Grigoriev. White wins. W: Ka3, g2. B: Kg5." Visualisering av brettet er god trening, men stillingene er stort sett ganske vanskelige også med diagram.

De fleste stillingene er sluttspillstudier (hvit i trekket vinner eller klarer remis), de fleste heldigvis med bare få brikker. Noen få av stillingene er oppgaver med matt i 2 eller 3 trekk.

Lenger ut i boka kommer alle de 50 stillingene også som diagrammer, og helt til slutt løsningene. Sikkert en original og fin treningsbok for ambisiøse og talentfulle spillere.

Uten diagram er dette desidert stoff for mesterspillere i hodet, passende for dem som virkelig vil bli gode, kanskje stormestere. Brukt fra diagrammene er det nok en treningsbok for spillere fra ratingnivå cirka 16-1700 og oppover.

Utgiverens egen omtale:

This book will train and test your visualization skills with 50 well-selected positions!

The ability to play chess blindfolded has always amazed the public and club players alike. You might have seen Beth Harmon play blindfolded chess on the ceiling in the Netflix hit 'The Queen's Gambit'. Even though Beth seems to have acquired the skill out of the blue it takes practice to master it in reality. This book will give you 50 well-selected endgame studies, positions, and mate problems, that you can practice on. They are presented in the following manner, with first the composer/game, then the result, and the position of the pieces.

Why This Book? As a chess player, I have always been impressed by strong chess players' abilities to visualize the board without seeing it, firing off variations in the post mortem, or walking away from the board during a game while thinking about the position. As an adult trying to learn the game and improve I really want to be able to improve my ability to visualize. However, I soon discovered that there wasn't much training material available. To change this I have gone through hundreds of endgame studies, game positions, and mate problems to select the best positions for blindfold solving.

You might ask yourself why should I spend time trying to visualize a position and calculate when I have the board to look at during the game. Boris Gelfand said it pretty clearly in an interview on the Perpetual Podcast: “to save energy”. By straining your brain muscles now, you will be able to outlast your next opponent. This book contains 50 blindfold endgame positions. This might not sound like a lot, but most people buy chess books and never finish them resulting in a feeling of failure. Even adults with jobs and kids, like myself, can finish this book and get a sense of achievement.

This will hopefully motivate you to keep going, and I plan to publish a second volume in 2021 with more positions. I hope that the book will challenge you to stretch and strain your mind in the effort to solve these positions. Don’t be scared of failing as long as you put in the effort. You can also see it as a meditative exercise disconnecting from the outside world.

Set aside a minimum amount of time you want to spend on each position. I will suggest 15 minutes. If you haven't solved it by then, take a look at the diagram of the position in the back, before you try to solve it blindfolded again. If you feel stuck try to write down your variations on paper.

Finally, if all else fails try to solve it by looking at the diagrams in the book.