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Don wrote:

Werewolf wrote:As an OTB player I'm just shy of 2200 elo. I've spend quite a bit of time trying to find what's holding me back and one of my problems is the visualisation of chess positions during analysis.

I often get the board muddled and miss things and when the position I had imagined actually gets played. Over the board it looks very different to how I saw it in my mind a few moves back. I'm starting to think this may be a residual image problem as I have a good eye for tactics (weirdly).

Does anyone know how to beat this? Has anything good been written on this topic? I notice that quite a few players are closing their eyes these days or turning away from the board - is that to visualise a 2D board in their mind which they can move the pieces around at will??

Any help appreciated!

How about blindfold practice? I think any player over 1800 can probably play 1 game blindfold, or at least do it with some practice. I don't know if it will help your chess but it seems like it might.

I think that I remember hearing that xboard has a blindfold mode, not sure if it does or how it works. You can run Crafty too I'm pretty sure in a terminal without display - or just cover the screen except for the prompt.

Werewolf wrote:

Don wrote:

Werewolf wrote:As an OTB player I'm just shy of 2200 elo. I've spend quite a bit of time trying to find what's holding me back and one of my problems is the visualisation of chess positions during analysis.

I often get the board muddled and miss things and when the position I had imagined actually gets played. Over the board it looks very different to how I saw it in my mind a few moves back. I'm starting to think this may be a residual image problem as I have a good eye for tactics (weirdly).

Does anyone know how to beat this? Has anything good been written on this topic? I notice that quite a few players are closing their eyes these days or turning away from the board - is that to visualise a 2D board in their mind which they can move the pieces around at will??

Any help appreciated!

How about blindfold practice? I think any player over 1800 can probably play 1 game blindfold, or at least do it with some practice. I don't know if it will help your chess but it seems like it might.

I think that I remember hearing that xboard has a blindfold mode, not sure if it does or how it works. You can run Crafty too I'm pretty sure in a terminal without display - or just cover the screen except for the prompt.

Thanks Don, I'll give that a go. The problem I have though, is when the board is ACTUALLY IN FRONT OF ME, it overrides what's in my head....hence I was wondering about closing my eyes.

On a far more important note...how's Komodo going?

Don wrote:
Getting Komodo MP ready for Peters tournament, also have some ELO gains.

Dan Andersson wrote:I've never understood the love the Kotov books get from some. They have a very few points when it comes to practical chess. OTOH it promotes strange ideas of the execution of "master" plans and strategy by showing off games where one side more or less lies down on the ground and resigns. The tricks of mental calculation are also grossly simplified and artificial. In my opinion Laker, Euwe, Nunn, Watson, Yermolinski and a whole host of others do a much better job. Same gripe I have with the Nimzowitch books, Alburt and Seirawan strip the strange metaphysics away and have game analysis you can actually rely on. Seirawan's beginners Winning Chess for example manages to teach rank beginners everything worth knowing in the old books.

Sorry for the rant

MvH Dan Andersson

Werewolf wrote:

Don wrote:
Getting Komodo MP ready for Peters tournament, also have some ELO gains.

Peters tournament....I must have been living in a black hole, sorry. What tournament is that? Is there a webpage or broadcast?