Blindfold chess training exercises with a focus on endgame positions This book will train and test your visualization skills through 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 blindfold 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. Try to see if you can solve the following position: D. Khismatullin vs. A. Volokitin, 2008 White draws W: Kc2, a2 B: Ke3, c3, b4 Why This Book? 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 a paper. Finally, if all else fails try to solve it by looking at the diagrams in the book. What do the experts say? "Ericsson notes that for a novice, somewhere around an hour a day of intense concentration seems to be a limit, while for experts this number can expand to as many as four hours-but rarely more."― Cal Newport, Deep Work "We played blindfold chess wherever we were-dancing, hiking, on buses and trains; wherever two of us happened to be, we would begin a blindfold game. All over Antwerp, people shook their heads at this babbling crew. A year later I was playing 16 games blindfold, which represented a new Belgian record. In 1924, while in the Belgian army, I played 20 at Naur, a sort of pay-off for having nothing to do but peel potatoes for two hours a day." ― George Koltanowski "Playing blindfold, like it or not, you have to make your body work at full power, otherwise, you risk losing your" orientation at the board" ― Vladimir Kramnik This book is not a beginner's book but aimed for intermediate and expert players who want a challenge! Solution: 1.a3 bxa3 2.Kxc3 a2 3.Kb2 a1=Q 4.Kxa1 1/2-1/2

This book has a set of 100 exercises that will train you to play Chess blindfolded. Apart from providing hours of active relaxation, it will also give an excellent workout to the little grey cells.

For centuries, blindfold chess--the art of playing without sight of the board or pieces--has produced some of the greatest feats of human memory, progressing to the extent that the world record in 2009 was 45 [and is now 46] simultaneous blindfold games. This work describes the personalities and achievements of some of blindfold chess's greatest players--including Philidor, Morphy, Blackburne, Zukertort, Pillsbury, Reti, Alekhine, Koltanowski, Najdorf and Fine, as well as present-day grandmasters such as Anand and Kramnik. Including some never before published, 444 games scores are presented, peppered with diagrams and annotations. Hints for playing blindfold, and its practical value, are also included.

Written by a Grand Master, this guide isolates basic elements and illustrates them through Master and Grand Master games, breaking down the mystique of strategy into easy-to-understand ideas.

It’s a fact of chess life that if you want to win, you have to put a bit of study in. Every chess player, from near-beginner to experienced tournament player, needs to learn the openings and keep on top of current theory. But studying doesn’t have to be dull. This indispensable book contains foolproof ways to help the information go in... and stay in. Acclaimed chess author Andrew Soltis reveals the key techniques: - Why you can’t study chess the same way you study school subjects - How to acquire the most important knowledge: intuition - The role of memorizing (it’s not a bad thing, despite what people say) - How to get the most out of playing over a master’s game - Adopting a chess hero as a means of learning - How great players study - Computers as a study tool - How to train someone else

When You Are Serious about Improving... To improve and succeed, a chessplayer must be able calculate precisely and visualize prospective positions. This is easier said than done. While pondering the next move, a chessplayer frequently keeps “replaying” the same melody in his mind, thus falling into a kind of trance. This book by Russian grandmaster Konstantin Chernyshov is designed to improve your visualization and calculation skills. With 500 exercises and an additional 250 puzzles, the author provides a vast amount of material to work through for students and coaches of the game. Most exercises require the reader to go through several stages of thought, including visualizing the configuration of the pieces, evaluating the resulting positions, and finally, calculating an accurate continuation. The regimen suggested by the author will require a disciplined approach by serious chessplayers. The exercises and puzzles start out with easy examples, but they gradually become more difficult. And all are meant to be solved without sight of the board. As noted by Ian Harris in his foreword: Cognitive Chess is designed to train you to visualize the board and correctly calculate sequences in your mind, skills that are essential to problem solving in all phases of the game. Players who train in these areas will certainly see an overall improvement in their game. After all, chess is ultimately a contest between opponents to determine who can “out-calculate” the other. Cognitive Chess: When you are serious about taking your game to the next level...