Economist Kenneth Rogoff and Blindfold Chess

The financial crises of the past few years have adversely affected almost all of us. Of course they are among the most common topics that politicians, bloggers, newscasters, Main Streeters and Wall Streeters, and just about everyone else discuss endlessly and debate vigorously. The publication last year of This Time Is Different by world-renowned economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart offered a historical investigation of disastrous monetary decisions from 66 countries over the last 800 years, not focusing on the application of recent economic theory but presenting data that many contemporary economists neglect, are ignorant of, or think are irrelevant to today’s major issues. The book is a best seller, having sold nearly 100,000 copies since last September’s publication.

So the book is basically non-theoretical in focus, unlike most current economic tomes, and is very factually oriented. An article about it by Catherine Rampell was featured in The New York Times of July 4, where she describes it as a “quantitative reconstruction of hundreds of historical episodes in which perfectly smart people made perfectly disastrous decisions.” Readers of our website can find the article here. Or they could have seen Rogoff in person on one of his numerous appearances on CNN and other television channels. However, they may be surprised that Rampell devotes some space to Rogoff’s chess career, which I think certainly did merit mention.

At the age of 17, Rogoff played first board for the United States team that won the Chess World Student Olympiad in Haifa, Israel, in 1970. He finally gained the grandmaster title in 1978 and soon afterward completely gave up serious chess! He decided to devote himself to the field of economics and after graduate work at MIT, he eventually became chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and later accepted professorships, first at Princeton and then at Harvard, where he is now located.

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Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 07:05 PM  |  Comments: 0

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Marc Lang, Holder of New German Simultaneous Blindfold Record, Will Try 46 Games for World Record

FIDE master Marc Lang, who set a new German record of 23 simultaneous blindfold games last November, has announced that he will attempt something especially spectacular next year: to beat the long-standing world record of 45 games, set over 60 years ago by Grandmaster Miguel Najdorf in São Paulo, Brazil in 1947. Fans of this website will recall that we located Najdorf’s only surviving opponent from that exhibition and he contributed his memories of that event for a blog we posted last April 11. Check our list of blogs if you would like to read it over. In another blog (June 28, 2009) we noted that Lang had recently played 15 simultaneous blindfold games and was going to try to surpass the German record of 22, set by British GM Anthony Miles in Roetgen in 1984. Lang kept his promise and took on 23 last November 21. We are hoping he can keep his new promise and in 2011 successfully achieve a new world record of 46, earning himself a distinctive place in chess history.

Since no one has apparently played more than 26 simultaneous blindfold games since 1993, when Hans Jung of Canada played that many, Lang will be taking quite a leap forward and doubling the number of games he handled in his 23-board display. The 23-board display has not received adequate coverage in the non-German chess media and Lang was kind enough to send us more material about that exhibition, including a selection of games and a few photographs. We devote this blog mainly to his play in that event and will let you ponder whether he will be able to accomplish his goal of 46 games next year.

Lang, 40 and married with two young children, is a self-employed computer programmer and antique dealer, too busy with his business and family to play chess professionally. He lives in Günzburg, 60 miles west of Munich in Bavaria, and keeps up with chess by reading many relevant books and magazines without any chessboard available, in his bed or bathroom. Lang has remarked that “blindfold is just like I’m used to studying chess”.

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Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 11:24 AM  |  Comments: 1

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Intriguing, First-Ever Comparison: Grandmaster Rankings in Blindfold, Rapid, and Regular (FIDE) Play

Grandmaster tournaments and matches are much more varied today than they were throughout most of the 20th century. The “old-fashioned” events had slow time limits and players rarely had to play more than one game a day. More recent tourneys are often played at a much faster overall pace, frequently have sudden-death blitz playoffs after a relatively slow start, and may involve computers or humans-plus-computer as entries. One of the most interesting new varieties has consistently attracted the top grandmasters in the world to its venue – the annual Amber tournaments in Monaco or Nice during March or April. There the contestants play two games a day with a single opponent, one at a rapid speed (25 minutes for the entire game, with a bonus of 10 sec for each move made) with a standard chessboard and pieces to move in front of them, and the other at basically the same speed with both players “blindfolded”, in the sense that they enter their moves on a computer keyboard but can see only a blank chessboard and their opponent’s last move on the monitor facing them.

The Amber tourneys allow an eventual comparison of each player’s world ranking at blindfold chess with his or her ranking in rapid chess or in chess at the traditional slow speed (“classical”, FIDE-rated games). Would the FIDE rankings of grandmasters correlate best with their blindfold play or with their rapid play, and would players’ rankings in blindfold and rapid chess differ significantly? Supposedly obvious predictions about these correlations might prove false if data were available to test them.

Elmer Sangalang of the Philippines volunteered to calculate ratings based on the 2,376 games played in the rapid and blindfold modes over all the 18 Amber tourneys that started in 1993, including the most recent event in March of 2010. Sangalang was the editor of the 2nd edition of Arpad Elo’s “The Rating of Chess Players, Past and Present”, published in 1986, which extended and corrected material in the first edition. Now retired, Sangalang worked mainly as an engineer, actuary, and applied mathematician. He has been a consultant for FIDE on the ELO rating system since 1984.

It was not an easy job to collect complete scoretables for every Amber tourney but ultimately Sangalang was successful and he could include all games from the blindfold and rapid halves of those events. On the other hand, FIDE ratings appear regularly every 2 months and he waited for the publication of the May 1, 2010 ratings and rankings to have the most recent results available for his analysis.

His method for calculating the Amber rapid and blindfold ratings followed the standard ELO procedure (Method of Successive Approximations). The calculations began by assigning every player an initial rating of 2600, to keep the numerical values completely independent of players’ different FIDE ratings. Starting with the players’ actual FIDE ratings seemed less reasonable and would bias the results in favor of the more highly-ranked individuals. So all the numerical ratings for the three groups presented below (Blindfold, Rapid, and FIDE) are independent of each other and cannot be compared in terms of their numerical values, that is, one cannot conclude that, say, Anand’s FIDE rating of 2789 means that he is better at slow chess than rapid chess (rating of 2688) or blindfold chess (rating of 2667). However, the rankings of the players (from 1 to 29) have no such limitations or restrictions and a comparison of these in the three groups is entirely justified. To increase the statistical reliability of the results, only players who participated in at least two Amber tourneys were included below, a total of 29 competitors.

Here are the results for the three types of play. We reiterate that each of the three sets of data are independent of each other, and the numerical values of the ratings cannot be legitimately compared. Before looking at the results, readers might like to guess, for example, whether FIDE rankings would correlate best with rankings in blindfold play or sighted rapid play.

Ranking	Name	Number of Amber Tourneys	Blindfold Rating
1	Morozevich, Alexander	8	2739
2	Kramnik, Vladimir	16	2704
3	Grischuk, Alexander	2	2703
4	Anand, Viswanathan	16	2667
5	Topalov, Veselin	12	2644
6	Shirov, Alexei	11	2633
7	Leko, Peter	9	2628
8	Carlsen, Magnus	4	2628
9	Aronian, Levon	5	2620
10	Ivanchuk, Vassily	18	2615
11	Svidler, Peter	5	2614
12	Radjabov, Teimor	2	2594
13	Kamsky, Gata	4	2586
14	Karpov, Anatoly	9	2586
15	Almasi, Zoltan	3	2581
16	Gelfand, Boris	11	2575
17	Karjakin, Sergey	3	2573
18	Lautier, Joel	6	2569
19	Bareev, Evgeny	4	2536
20	Vallejo Pons, Francisco	4	2531
21	Nikolic, Predrag	6	2516
22	Polgar, Judit	4	2515
23	Polgar, Susan	2	2513
24	Piket, Jeroen	10	2510
25	Van Wely, Loek	12	2503
26	Ljubojevic, Ljubomir	11	2486
27	Seirawan, Yasser	2	2481
28	Nunn, John	2	2431
29	Korchnoi, Viktor	2	2350

Ranking	Name	Number of Amber Tourneys	Rapid Rating
1	Aronian, Levon	5	2703
2	Anand, Viswanathan	16	2688
3	Bareev, Evgeny	4	2683
4	Carlsen, Magnus	4	2667
5	Ivanchuk, Vassily	18	2655
6	Kramnik, Vladimir	16	2650
7	Leko, Peter	9	2648
8	Kamsky, Gata	4	2644
9	Topalov, Veselin	12	2642
10	Shirov, Alexei	11	2638
11	Karjakin, Sergey	3	2628
12	Svidler, Peter	5	2617
13	Morozevich, Alexander	8	2617
14	Gelfand, Boris	11	2613
15	Karpov, Anatoly	9	2608
16	Polgar, Judit	4	2591
17	Radjabov, Teimor	2	2553
18	Grischuk, Alexander	2	2546
19	Piket, Jeroen	10	2545
20	Van Wely, Loek	12	2534
21	Almasi, Zoltan	3	2527
22	Vallejo Pons, Francisco	4	2515
23	Korchnoi, Viktor	2	2508
24	Lautier, Joel	6	2498
25	Ljubojevic, Ljubomir	11	2494
26	Nikolic, Predrag	6	2478
27	Seirawan, Yasser	2	2474
28	Polgar, Susan	2	2454
29	Nunn, John	2	2432

Ranking	Name	FIDE Rating
1	Carlsen, Magnus	2813
2	Topalov, Veselin	2812
3	Kramnik, Vladimir	2790
4	Anand, Viswanathan	2789
5	Aronian, Levon	2783
6	Grischuk, Alexander	2760
7	Shirov, Alexei	2742
8	Gelfand, Boris	2741
9	Ivanchuk, Vassily	2741
10	Radjabov. Teimor	2740
11	Karjakin, Sergey	2739
12	Leko, Peter	2735
13	Svidler, Peter	2735
14	Almasi, Zoltan	2725
15	Morozevich, Alexander	2715
16	Vallejo Pons, Francisco	2703
17	Kamsky, Gata	2702
18	Polgar, Judit	2682
19	Bareev, Evgeny	2663
20	Lautier, Joel	2658
21	Van Wely, Loek	2653
22	Seirawan, Yasser	2644
23	Piket, Jeroen	2624
24	Karpov, Anatoly	2619
25	Nikolic, Predrag	2606
26	Nunn, John	2602
27	Polgar, Susan	2577
28	Ljubojevic, Ljubomir	2572
29	Korchnoi, Viktor	2564

After all the above rankings had been tabulated, statistically-determined correlations were calculated for each of the three possible pairs of comparisons: Blindfold vs. Rapid, Blindfold vs. FIDE, and Rapid vs. FIDE. Somewhat surprisingly, the FIDE rankings correlated most strongly with the Blindfold rather than with the Rapid rankings, even though both the FIDE and Rapid results involved games played with sight of a chessboard and the Blindfold games did not. All the different correlations were highly statistically reliable, but the strongest one was between FIDE and Blindfold; the next highest was between FIDE and Rapid, and the weakest was between Blindfold and Rapid. For those readers who are familiar with correlational techniques in statistics , the FIDE vs. Blindfold correlation for player rankings was +.84, for FIDE vs. Rapid +.76, and for Blindfold vs. Rapid +.72.

It is intriguing to speculate as to why a player’s world ranking (FIDE) in regular, “classical” chess would correlate best with his or her blindfold ranking, rather than with his or her regular rapid play. We offer one possibility and we welcome other suggestions from readers: Players may well be more cautious or careful in blindfold play than in rapid play with sight of the chessboard and thus try riskier lines of play in the latter, leading to more variable outcomes. (Recall the advice of world-class blindfold players like Alekhine who recommended that one “keep it simple” when playing without sight of the board). The fact that in the Amber tourneys the correlation between the Blindfold and Rapid conditions was relatively low (+.72) would be consistent with essentially the same kind of argument. At any rate, and speaking more loosely, you can predict a grandmaster’s FIDE ranking better from his Blindfold ranking than from his Rapid ranking.

We thank Mr. Sangalang for his careful and extensive work making the above calculations. Readers with questions or critical comments should send them to him or us via the “Comments” boxes below this blog. All of them will be published and answered.

Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 06:25 PM  |  Comments: 1

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An Audio Interview With Eliot Hearst

An interview with Eliot Hearst, conducted by IM John Watson on the Internet Chess Club website, was published on Tuesday, April 6, at 3PM (ET). The interview focuses on blindfold chess, but covers other general chess topics.

Here is a direct link to a free preview of the audio interview with Eliot Hearst.

The ICC site features more than 100 other interviews with various chess personalities.

Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 02:19 PM  |  Comments: 0

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The First Regulated Multi-Board Blindfold Simultaneous by a Woman: Anna Zatonskih Plays Five

In the years we spent researching our book on Blindfold Chess we never discovered any report of a scheduled, well-regulated multi-board blindfold simultaneous display by a woman, although we do mention some individual games that women played without sight of the board (see pp.136-138 of the book and the games section). We asked the eminent chess historian Edward Winter if he had knowledge of such a performance and he could not recall a single case. So in his “Chess Notes” column of August 29, 2009 (CN 6289 at www.chesshistory.com) he asked his large number of readers whether any of them could supply information about a woman’s playing more than one or two games under well-controlled conditions. No one responded with an example.

The current women’s world champion, Alexandra Kosteniuk, has stated that she could probably manage three or four blindfold games at the same time, but has never really tried to play more than three (see her September 7, 2009 blog at www.chessblog.com). Apparently these three were not played under well-controlled, serious conditions, but were relatively informal. Therefore it seems very likely that the 5-board display recently given by U.S. Women’s Champion Anna Zatonskih is the first instance of an organized, refereed, formal multi-board simultaneous blindfold display by a woman. It was played in St. Louis in October, 2009 just before the start of the U.S. Women’s Championship, which was won by the defending champion, Anna herself, who has now won that championship three times. Throughout her exhibition Anna actually wore a blindfold, which was used for its dramatic effect since all her opponents were behind her and so she could not see any of the board positions anyway.

Woman GM Jennifer Shahade, one of the organizers of all the events connected with the championship (she did not enter the competition this time), devised a very original and clever idea to further promote blindfold chess during the festivities in St. Louis—a scheme that involved all 10 entrants in the tourney playing a single blindfold game together! In drawing numbers to determine the round-robin pairings in the championship, a necessary preliminary in all such tourneys, each woman picked a scarf from one of ten available. The players made their choices in a predetermined random order. Each scarf had a hidden number stitched on it, which would be the number assigned the player who chose it. Then the 10 players were blindfolded and sat in a row of numbered chairs that alternated in color. Number 1 started the group blindfold game by calling out her move (White’s first move) and then Number 2, seated next to Number 1, responded with Black’s first move, and so on, with the odd-numbered players composing the White team and the even-numbered players the Black team. The game was played rapidly and Black won eventually when a White player blundered away a queen. The White team had to resign and the crowd watching this spectacle gave all 10 women a standing ovation.

A video of the arrangement at the exhibition, including some vocal comments from Anna at the conclusion of play, follows. The video was filmed by Macauley Peterson of chess.fm and is also available at blip.tv:

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Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 10:00 PM  |  Comments: 0

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Zukertort Interview (1883): How I Play Blindfold Simultaneous Chess

Although our book covers Johannes Zukertort’s blindfold career in detail, his answers to a reporter from The New York Herald on December 2, 1883, add some color and additional particulars about his play without sight of the board. Zukertort held the world record for number of simultaneous games played blindfolded for almost a quarter of a century. He set a new record by playing 16 at once in 1876 in London, which was not equaled or exceeded until Harry Pillsbury played 16, 17, and 20 total games in 1900. Here are some of Zukertort’s comments from the 1883 article, seven years after he set his record and when he was touring New York. The article is titled “What The Memory Can Do” and two subtitles are “A head full of pigeonholes” and “Mental pictures that come and go like those of a magic lantern.”

The NYH reporter first asked Zukertort to explain the method by which he is able to play a number of blindfold games at once:

I was first taught the moves on a chessboard in 1860, when I was eighteen years old. I was at college studying the natural sciences. Soon after that I went to the University of Breslau, where there was a chess club, and where I was beaten nine out of every ten games I played. This was in June, 1861. Then I began to study chess — in fact, I became infatuated with the game. I played in the day time and read chess books at night. By the following February there was no man living who could give me the odds of a knight. The great Anderssen was in Breslau, and we played together a great deal. In a series of twenty-four games, in which he gave me the odds of a knight, I won twenty and drew two.

In reading the chess books so much I discovered my capacity for carrying on a game as I read it, without looking at a board, in much the same way as a musician might read music. I cultivated the faculty, and finding that I could play one game blindfold I tried to play two games, and was successful. In January, 1868, I gave my first public exhibition of blindfold playing. I played seven games at that time, and afterward nine games. I never played eight that I can remember. Gradually I ran the number up from nine to twelve, and finally to sixteen. That is as many games as I have ever attempted blindfold, and no other player has ever done as much. I played the sixteen in the West End Chess Club of London December 11, 1876, against sixteen of the strongest amateur players of the St. George’s and West End clubs. I won twelve, drew three and lost but one. The single winner was an American gentleman living in London, Mr. W. Ballard.

The reporter asked: Can you play more than sixteen games, do you think?

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Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 10:36 AM  |  Comments: 0

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Both Without Sight: Two of the Best Blindfold Masters Faced Each Other in 1923

Alexander Alekhine, generally accepted as the best simultaneous blindfold player of all time, considered Friedrich Sämisch (1896-1975) as a brilliant blindfold player, “technically perfect, fast, and confident”. Many chess historians rate Sämisch as Germany’s best-ever blindfold player, although most of his displays were on only 10 boards (his maximum was 20, which was not a world record at that time). In a vast collection of blindfold games amassed by Hindemburg Melao of Brazil, we recently discovered a game in which they both played blindfolded (the exact conditions of this one-on-one contest were not spelled out). Here Alekhine won by a sparkling queen sacrifice, and most readers will have no trouble figuring out why it led to Sämisch’s resignation.

A. Alekhine-F. Sämisch      B30
Berlin,1923 (Both players blindfolded)

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Be2 e6 4.0–0 d6 5.d4 cxd4 6.Nxd4 Nf6 7.Bf3 Ne5 8.c4 Nxf3+ 9.Qxf3 Be7 10.Nc3 0–0 11.b3 Nd7 12.Bb2 Bf6 13.Rad1 a6 14.Qg3 Qc7 15.Kh1 Rd8 16.f4 b6 17.f5 Be5

18.fxe6!! Bxg3 19.exf7+ Kh8 20.Nd5! 1–0

Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 02:34 AM  |  Comments: 0

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Two Australians and a German: Absent From Our Book But Worthy of Mention

In writing our book on blindfold chess, we had strict space and page limitations imposed by McFarland Publishers to prevent the book from being prohibitively expensive. Consequently we had to delete from our final manuscript many games that we would have liked to include (of the thousands we collected) and to abbreviate descriptions of the achievements of masters who did not seem to us to deserve much more than a few sentences or a footnote, in comparison to the champions we believed required appreciable attention and emphasis. It’s been almost a year since publication of the book and correspondents around the world have not informed us of more than a very few blindfold experts that we had really completely overlooked and failed to mention at all. Here we discuss three players that fall in that category, two Australians and a German.

Writing in The Washington Post (August 31, 2009) Lubomir Kavalek notes the absence of Australian blindfold masters in the book (which is especially disappointing to me because my children are half Australian!). One person Kavalek lists is John Kellner (1931- ) who holds the Australian record for number of opponents faced in a simultaneous blindfold display. He set this record in 1973 when taking on 17 players at once. He is also known for his prowess in postal chess, where in 1968 he achieved the title of International Master of Correspondence Chess. If readers from Down Under or elsewhere can supply us with details of his record-setting exhibition and other accomplishments in blindfold chess, we will be glad to publish them on this website. Please insert your remarks in the email Comment section below this blog.

A more internationally-known Australian blindfold player is Grandmaster Ian Rogers (b. 1960, GM 1985), who in addition to his triumphs in regular chess has given numerous displays of 12 boards or fewer without sight of any of his opponents. Kavalek published a blindfold game of his against Josef Horejs, played in Prague in 1996. Rogers’s score in that exhibition was 9 wins and 1 draw against 10 club players rated up to 2300.The display took about 4 hours. Here is the score of that game:

1.c4 c5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.g3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.Bg2 Nxc3 6.bxc3 Nc6 7.Rb1 e5 8.Qa4 Qc7 9.Bxc6+ Qxc6 10.Qxc6+ bxc6 11.Nf3 Bd6 12.d3 Be6 13.c4 0-0 14.Ng5 Rab8 15.Rxb8 Rxb8 16.Nxe6 fxe6 17.Kd1 Kf7 18.Kc2 Ke7 19.Be3 Kf6 20.Rb1 Rxb1 21.Kxb1 g6 22.Kc2 Ke7 23.g4 Kd7 24.h3 Ke7 25.Kd2 Kf6 26.f3 Ke7 27.Bg5+ Kd7 28.Ke3 Bc7 (and then seeing that White will pick up his e-pawn, Black resigned).

Reviewing our book on ChessCafe.com. on August 23, 2009, Olimpiu Urcan noted a 19th-century German who was a promising blindfold player. He was Berthold Suhle (b.1837 in Poland, but who spent most of his life in Germany; he died in 1904).Urcan gives the following quote from The Chess Player’s Chronicle (1859, pages 71-72):

In Germany a new star has also appeared on the Chess horizons, which threatens to dim the light of the Morphy star. Herr Berthold Suhle, in Bonn, twenty-one years of age, has completely defeated several of the German Chess celebrities, amongst others the well-known player Captain Bothe in Cologne, and the strongest player of Venice, Signor Torliko. In blindfold play he has successfully rivalled the performance of Morphy and Harrwitz, having on 20th December last [1858] played eight players at the same time, without seeing the board, and, in a series of 295 moves, won six games and drawn two.

The same journal supplied the score of one of the games played by Suhle against Mr. Kr. in this display, as follows:

1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5 h5 6.Bc4 Rh7 7.d4 Bh6 8.Nc3 c6 9.Nd3 Qf6 10.e5 Qf5 1l.Nc5 Qg6 12.Bd3 Qg7 13.Bxh7 Qxh7 14. N3e4 b6 15.Nd6+ Kd8 16.Nd3 f6 17.Bxf4 Ba6 18.Qd2 Bf8 19. Rf1 Bxd6 20.exd6 Qe4+ 21.Qe3 f5 22.Qxe4 fxe4 23.Bg5+ Ke8 Here Suhle announced mate in ten moves with the continuation 24.0-0-0! c5 25.Rde1 Bb7 26.Ne5 Bd5 27.Ng6 Bf7 28.Rxe4+ Ne7 29.Bxe7 Nc6 30.Bg5+ Ne7 31.Bxe7 …. 32.Bg5+ Be6 33.Rf8 checkmate. [Since some of these 10 moves are not absolutely forced, it is doubtful whether Suhle was justified in announcing a mate in 10 moves. Perhaps Black could have lasted longer than that and perhaps Suhle could have mated more quickly than in 10 moves. Ask your computer!: E. Hearst]

Urcan goes on to note that Suhle drew a match with Adolf Anderssen in Berlin in 1864 and became an active chess writer in later years. Urcan does not know whether Suhle continued to give frequent blindfold displays after the above event, but it is significant that by December 1858, Louis Paulsen had already played 8-, 10-, and 12-board blindfold displays and Morphy had given two exhibitions of 8 boards each. So Suhle did not set a new world record in this display, but he did equal Morphy’s number.

We thank Kavalek and Urcan for providing information about the blindfold achievements of the three players we have mentioned above. Whether they deserved a reasonable amount of space in our book we will let readers and book critics decide, especially since we had strict word limitations imposed by our publisher.

Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 09:55 PM  |  Comments: 0

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Exciting Video of Mikhail Tal Giving a Blindfold Simultaneous Exhibition

It is rare to obtain a video of a top grandmaster and world champion playing a public simultaneous display without sight of any of the boards. This video is in Russian, but we think readers will find it of great interest, especially since most chess fans have never themselves observed a blindfold exhibition.

This was first posted at ChessBase, which has quite a bit of background about the video.

Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 04:23 PM  |  Comments: 0

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A Forgotten Blindfold Championship. Are There Others?

Joe Lux writes to tell us the following:

Back in the late seventies, Fred Townsend organized the New England Blindfold Championship in CT. It had 6 entries, none from CT! I tied for first, but had lost the games long ago. That was the only such event I have seen since.

We would be very interested to hear from other readers who know of blindfold tourneys that have been held but are now “forgotten.” Please send such items for posting on this website by using the contact email beneath the above item.

Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 07:50 AM  |  Comments: 0

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German Master Plays 15 Simultaneous Blindfold Games, Will Try to Break German Record of 22 This Fall

On June 6 in Krumbach, Germany, FIDE master Marc Lang took on 15 opponents at once, without sight of any chessboards or pieces. We believe that this is the largest number of players anyone has attempted to play simultaneously since 1993, when Hans Jung of Canada played 26. Lang’s ease at handling 15 opponents has encouraged him to strive for greater heights and to oppose 23-26 players at once this fall. The record number of simultaneous blindfold games played in Germany was for a very long time the 21 opponents that Harry Pillsbury of the U.S. faced at Hanover in 1902, but in 1984 Anthony Miles of England topped Pillsbury’s record by opposing 22, as part of the centennial celebration of the Roetgen Chess Club. We describe both Pillsbury’s and Miles’s displays in our book, to which readers may refer for more details.

Email exchanges with Lang have provided us with interesting information about Lang himself and his recent exhibition. Lang, 39 and married, has had little time to play in regular tournaments because he must devote himself to his computer programming business in Günzburg, 60 miles west of Munich in Bavaria, as well as to his growing family: a son,7, with another child due in October. He keeps up with chess by reading many relevant books and magazines without any chessboard available, in his bed or bathroom. “Blindfold is just like I’m used to studying chess”, he says.

Lang claims that his memory is not exceptional at all, but quite chess-focussed (this is typical of expert blindfold players). He jokes that he always forgets what his wife has asked him to do, and that when he puts frozen pretzels in the oven, 80% of the time they are burnt to “coal” before he remembers he put them there. He admits to a weakness in remembering faces and names, but chess games “stick in his head” and he even recalls parts of blitz games he played when he was a youngster.

His introduction to blindfold chess was unusual. Around 15 years ago, he was playing his friend, the now IM Mathias Duppel, a series of regular games in a café in Stuttgart when the waiter told them that chess playing was not allowed there. Their first reaction was to leave and never enter that café again, but Mathias suggested they play a 10-board blindfold simultaneous match against each other. No one could prohibit that! Lang won, 6-4, and not long afterward began to give standard blindfold displays, starting with 4 and ending up with 13 in 1998. He had to stop there and hardly played any chess at all over the next decade because he started his company, married, and eventually his son was born.

However, his vicarious interest in blindfold play continued and not long ago he decided to try to beat his previous personal record of 13 by playing 15. He says he was very nervous before that display a few weeks ago and slept poorly the night before the exhibition. But it turned out to be relatively easy. The opposition ranged in strength from around 900 to 2074, according to the German national rating system. The physical arrangement for the display was different from virtually all previous serious exhibitions over past centuries. Lang did not want to be blindfolded, sit with his back to the players, or be located in a separate room; he preferred to face the players and chat with them as the event progressed. So a cardboard barrier was set up that prevented him from seeing the chess positions but enabled him to see his opponents’ faces and converse with them as they announced their moves. He thinks this arrangement may have permitted him to more easily keep the various games separate in his memory because he could associate a face and a voice with a particular game.

Like other experienced blindfold players, he does not visualize boards and pieces, but only “spots” and “functions”. “For instance, I know there’s something called a rook on a1 and I know where it can move from there in that particular position. That’s all. There are no colors, no shapes, nothing. When I was younger, I used to see the board with yellow and black squares, but now even that has gone”

The display lasted a little over 8 hours and Lang scored 5 wins, only 1 loss, and 9 draws. At the end, because the four remaining players were getting tired, they simultaneously offered him draws. Although he had the advantage in two of the games and the other two were fairly equal, he decided to accept. In his next exhibition he thinks it would be a good idea to take a break of about a half-hour after five hours or so, to give both the remaining players and himself a rest period.

Lang expects to try to break the German blindfold simul record in November by playing at least 23 opponents and he has already contacted the potential organizers of the display in a town near Stuttgart to arrange the details. We wish him luck and thank him for taking the time to give us the above information about himself and blindfold chess.

Finally, here are two games from his recent 15-board exhibition:

M. Lang - H. Reif
1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c6 4.e4 dxe4 5.Nxe4 Bb4+ 6.Bd2 Qxd4 7.Bxb4 Qxe4+ 8.Be2 Qxg2 9.Qd6 Nd7 10.0-0-0! Qg5+ 11.f4 Qe7 12.Qd4 e5 13.Qd2 Qe6 14.Nf3 f6 15.fxe5 c5 16.exf6 Ngxf6 17.Ng5 Qb6 18.Bh5+! Nxh5 19.Rhe1+ Kf8 20.Bxc5+ (Black now loses by force; if 20…Qxc5 21.Ne6+ and if 20…Nxc5 21.Qd8+)  1-0

M. Lang - E.Fischer
1.d4 g6 2.c4 Bg7 3.Nc3 d6 4.e4 Nf6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.Be2 Nbd7 7.0-0 e5 8.Be3 Ng4 9.Bg5 f6 10.Bc1 a6 11.h3 Nh6 12.dxe5 Nxe5 13.Nxe5 fxe5 14.Be3 Be6 15.c5 dxc5 16.Bxc5 Rf7 17.Qc1 Rd7 18.Be3 Nf7 19.Na4 b6 20.b3 c5 21.Qc2 Qc7 22.Rfd1 Bf8 23.Rxd7 Bxd7 24.Nc3 Bc6 25.Bc4 b5 26.Bd5 Rc8 27.a4 b4 28.Bxc6 Qxc6 29.Nd5 a5 30.Rc1 Nd6 31.f3 c4 21.Nb6 Rc7 33.bxc4 Nb7 34.Nd5 Rc8 35.Qb2 Nc5 (This was one of the final four remaining games that were agreed drawn at this point. White can maintain the better position by say, 36.Rd1, but after more than 8 hours of play both the players and exhibitor were willing to stop here!)  1/2-1/2

Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 01:35 PM  |  Comments: 5

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Chess Columnist Strongly Disapproved of Blindfold Chess (in 1906)

In his Chess Note 6170 of June 13, 2009, at www.chesshistory.com, Edward Winter, the preeminent chess historian, cites the following quote from R.J. Buckley’s chess column in the Birmingham Weekly Mercury of August 25, 1906, p. 3. It presumably was triggered by blindfold champion Harry Pillsbury’s death two months earlier.

What has the sensational exhibition to do with beautiful chess? Why this craving for the red fire, the jugglery, the purposeless mental acrobatism that was fatal to Pillsbury? The desire for such exhibitions denotes a low level of intelligence.

Why should civilized chess amateurs exhibit the tastes of the bricklayer’s hodman or the British farm labourer?

Let the blindfold business die with poor Pillsbury. If another great chess master should arise in America, let him not be ‘butchered to make a gobe-mouche holiday’.

(Comment by E. Hearst: As our book substantiates in several places, playing large simultaneous blindfold chess exhibitions almost surely had little or nothing to do with Pillsbury’s death at the age of 33. Reliable reports indicate that the major cause of his death was from the effects of syphilis, a disease he contracted while a participant in the St. Petersburg tournament of 1895-96.)

Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 09:33 AM  |  Comments: 0

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A Chess-Position Memory Test (from Adriaan de Groot)

(Please don’t peek at the diagram, located quite far below our introductory words, until you have read the commentary. It will spoil your fun!)

Adriaan de Groot (1914-2006), often considered the “father of chess psychology”, was a pioneer in developing methods for studying the important factors in chess skill. His work in the 1930’s and 40’s was a major inspiration for the work of later psychologists who investigated pattern recognition, memory, calculation, experience, and other aspects of the ability to play chess well or badly. One method that he used in his research was to present players of varying skills with a position for just a few seconds and then to remove it from sight and ask his subjects to reproduce the entire position about 30 seconds later. Details, results, and conclusions of these studies, as well as several subsequent ones by other experimenters starting in the 1970’s, are described in our book (Part II : The Psychology of Blindfold Chess).

Here is one of de Groot’s test positions for you to test yourself on. The subjects who had to recall this position after viewing it briefly and then being asked to reconstruct it about a half-minute later included a grandmaster (Max Euwe), a weak master (deGroot himself!), an expert player, and an average player. Although he used only these four subjects, the general results he obtained have been repeated many times by subsequent experimenters in the course of doing different kinds of research. There are 22 pieces in this position and his scoring of their performance was based mainly on how many pieces were placed correctly after the intervening period during which the pieces had been removed from sight. Euwe recalled all the pieces and the correct squares on which they had been located (100%: score of 22), de Groot (score of 21), the expert (score of 16), and the average player (score of 9). Thus the ability to recall this position, as well as many others tested, depended greatly on the strength of the player, a result that has been repeated many times afterwards in a variety of studies examining different factors involved in chess skill.

Perhaps the most interesting result from this type of test situation is how well grandmasters can perform; most of them reconstruct quite complicated positions with virtually no errors after their brief exposure.

[Scroll down to see the diagram: Please prepare before viewing the diagram by arranging an empty board some distance from your computer with pieces ready to set up 30 sec after you study the diagram for 5-10 seconds. Reconstruct the diagrammed position on this board as accurately as you can to compare yourself to master and expert performance]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 09:49 PM  |  Comments: 0

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Three by Alekhine, Two Excellent and One Perhaps His Worst

Almost all experts on the history and play of blindfold chess consider Alexander Alekhine the best simultaneous blindfold player ever. He was also the only world-record-holder, with respect to the number of games played simultaneously without sight of the board, to hold the world championship in regular chess (1927-1935, 1937-1946). Here we present three of his games from world-record-setting blindfold displays, 26 at once in 1924 in New York and 28 at once in Paris in 1925. The opposition in the New York exhibition was extremely strong, against individual players, but the opposition in Paris, against teams of players from French chess groups, was also tough. Alekhine expressed the opinion that his opponents in New York were generally stronger than in Paris, which the Parisians disputed. We agree with Alekhine, on the basis of the available games and the quality of his opponents in New York, which may have been strongest array of players ever to face a blindfold exhibitor. The stories of these displays may be found in our book, as well as all the games we could unearth from them.

Here we present three games, two gems from the New York display and another from the Paris exhibition, in which Alekhine probably made the worst blunder he ever made in a blindfold event. So no one is perfect! The games are from our book (Numbers 140, 142, and 155 in our games section). The annotations are ours and one source for each game is given at the game’s end.

GAME 140
A. Alekhine — M. Pinkus
New York, April 27, 1924 (26 opponents)
Sicilian Defense
B74

1. e4 c5 We should point out that Milton Pinkus, not Albert S. Pinkus, was Alekhine’s opponent in this game. They were brothers and Albert was one of the U. S.’ s best players in the 1920s, 1940s, and 1950s. Albert (1903-1984) won his game from Alekhine in this 1924 blindfold display, one of only five losses he suffered against the very strong opposition. Unfortunately we could not locate the score of that game. Milton was a strong player who rarely participated in organized tournaments. 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 d6 6. Be2 g6 7. 0–0 Bg7 8. Be3 0–0 9. Nb3 Bd7 10. f4 Rc8 11. Bf3 Re8 12. Qd2 Alekhine stated that this move was “inexact” and that 12. Qe2 was to be preferred, the main reason being that Black can now reply with 12. ... Na5!. After 12. Qe2 this move would not have been any good because of 13. Bxa7. 12. ... Ng4? A mistake since it permits 14. f5 and the consequent weakening of Black’s kingside. 13. Bxg4 Bxg4 14. f5! Threatening to win the B on g4 by h3 followed by g4. 14. ... gxf5 15. Bh6 e6 16. Bxg7 Kxg7 17. h3 Bh5 18. exf5 exf5 19. Nd5! Alekhine considered this his best move in the game. Instead of playing 19. Rxf5 and regaining his sacrificed pawn, he chooses to keep the bishop “imprisoned” on the kingside and to make the square f4 more available for his own pieces. 19. ... Re2 20. Qf4 Bg6 After 20. ... Rxc2 21. Nd4 is very powerful, as is 21. Ne3. 21. Nd4 Nxd4 22. Qxd4+ We have found a problem with the game score from here until the 27th move. In his book On the Road to the World Championship 1923-1927 Alekhine gives the next few moves as 22. ... f6 23. c4 b6 24. b3 Qf8 25. Rad1 Rd8 26. Rfe1 Re5 but the New York chess editor Hermann Helms, as well as Skinner & Verhoeven (1998), give the game’s score as we continue below. The same position is reached by the 27th move in either case. We wonder whether it is possible that Alekhine recalled the game from memory and mixed up the order of moves, since he is believed to have annotated various games blindfolded, without an actual score or board in front of him. Oh, the habits of a blindfold champion! Since we do not know what was the cause of this discrepancy, we refrain from comments until the 27th move is reached. 22. ... Re5 23. c4 Qf8 24. b3 b6 25. Rad1 Rd8 26. Rfe1 f6 At this point we are back on track for the two variants of the game score. 27. Nf4 An ideal square for the knight and threatening Ne6+. 27. ... Qe7 28. Rf1 Re4 29. Qc3 Qe5 30. Qc1 Alekhine states that Black’s last few moves may seem “aggressive” but they have “achieved nothing” because he still possesses crippled pawns and an incarcerated bishop. 30. ... Kf7 31. h4 Playing 31. Rd5 just before this move would have been more efficient in ending the game quickly. 31. ... Qc5+ 32. Kh1 Bh5 33. Rd5 Qc8 34. Nh3 Preparing for the queen to travel to h6. 34. ... Bg6 35. h5 The alternative 35. Qh6 would have been met by the move 35. ... Kg8 36. h5? Rh4. 35. ... Bxh5 36. Rdxf5 Bg6 37. Rxf6+ Kg7 If instead 37. ... Kg8 then 38. Qh6 is overwhelming. 38. Qc3 Kg8 39. Qg3 Rg4 40. Qf2 Be4 41. Nf4 Qb7 Allowing a quick win but after 41. ... Qa8 42. Qe2 Rg5 43. Re6 would win anyway. However, Alekhine does not mention the alternatives 41. ... d5 or ... Re8, which may hold the game for Black.

42. Ne6! Now mate or loss of Black’s queen cannot be stopped. 42. ... Bxg2+ 43. Kh2 Black resigned here. A likely finish is 43. ... Kh8 44. Rf8+ Rxf8 45. Qxf8+ Rg8 46. Qxg8+ followed by mate. 1-0 [Skinner, L. M., & Verhoeven, R. G. P. (1998). Alexander Alekhine’s chess games, 1902-1946. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, p. 229]

GAME 142
A. Alekhine — A. Berman
New York, April 27, 1924 (26 opponents)
Vienna Game (Irregular)
C46

1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Bc5 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. Nxe5 Bxf2+ 5. Kxf2 Nxe5 6. d4 Ng6 7. Bc4 d6 8. Rf1 Be6 9. Bd3 Qf6+ 10. Kg1 Qxd4+ 11. Kh1 c6 12. Qe2 Nf6 13. Be3 Qe5 14. h3 h5 14. ... Nh5 would cause White more problems. 15. Bg1 Ke7 15. ... 0-0 was probably superior to posting the king in the center, especially against Alekhine! 16. Bh2 Qg5 17. Rad1 Ne5 18. Bf4 Qg6 19. Qe1 Really a nice move, allowing the knight to return to e2 and thence to f4 or d4 and also permitting White’s queen to enter on the queenside. 19. ... Ne8 20. Ne2 Perhaps Alekhine did not realize the strength of 20. Nd5+ cxd5 21. Bxe5 dxe5 22. exd5. 20. ... f6 21. Nd4 Rd8 22. Qb4 Rd7 23. Bxe5 fxe5 24. Nf5+ Bxf5 25. exf5 Qf6 26. Bc4 b5 27. Be6 Rb7 28. c4 c5 29. Qa5 Nc7

30. Rxd6! Na8 Of course if 30. ... Kxd6 31. Rd1+ Ke7 32. Rd7+ would give White an excellent game. Good also would have been 31. Qd2+ 31. Rfd1 Obviously White now has a winning position. 31. ... Nb6 32. Qxb5 Rc7 33. Rd7+ Nxd7 34. Rxd7+ Rxd7 35. Qxd7+ Kf8 36. Qc8+ Ke7 37. Qxc5+ Ke8 38. Qc6+ Kf8 39. Qc8+ Ke7 40. Qxh8 Alekhine had hesitated playing to win this rook because Black’s next move seems to give him excellent chances for a draw by perpetual check—with White’s queen so far from the main battleground. 40. ... Qg5 41. f6+ A flashy move but either 41. Qa8 or Bd5 are simpler and would allow White to escape perpetual check by enabling the queen or bishop to return to g2 after White eventually plays g3. 41. ... Qxf6 After 41. ... Kxe6 42. Qxg7 Qc1+ 43. Kh2 Qf4+ 44. Qg3 with a probably winning endgame. On 41. ... gxf6 42. Bd5 would be the appropriate answer. 42. Qxh5 Qf1+ 43. Kh2 Qf4+ 44. Kg1 Qc1+ 45. Kf2 Qxb2+ 46. Kg3 Qc3+ 47. Kh2 Kxe6 48. Qe8+ Kf6 49. Qf8+ Kg6 50. c5 e4 51. Qe8+ Kf5 The moves ... Kf6 or Kh6 would keep the game a better fight. 52. Qf7+ Kg5 53. h4+ Kg4? If Black played 53. ... Kh6 54. Qf4+ Kh7 55. Qxe4+ followed by c6 would win soon. 54. Qg6+ Finally White has a forced win. 54. ... Kf4 55. Qg5# Black fought hard, but… 1–0 [Skinner, L. M., & Verhoeven, R. G. P. (1998). Alexander Alekhine’s chess games, 1902-1946. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, p.229]

GAME 155
A. Alekhine — Ecole Polytechnique Paris
Paris, February 1, 1925 (28 opponents)
Queen’s Pawn Game
D05

1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. e3 e6 4. Nc3 c5 5. dxc5 Bxc5 6. a3 0–0 7. b4 Be7 8. Bb2 a6 9. h3 Nc6 10. Be2 b5 11. 0–0 Bb7 12. Nb1 Not really a “retreat” but a way of placing the knight soon on a more effective square, b3. By opening the bishop’s diagonal, the move also helps stop Black from playing e5. 12. ... Rc8 13. Nbd2 Qd6 14. Nb3 Nd7 15. Nfd4 Nce5 16. Na5 Ba8 17. a4 Nc4 18. Nxc4 bxc4 19. b5 Rfe8 20. Bc3 e5 21. Nc6? Throwing away a pawn for nothing. At this point Alekhine must have falsely believed Black’s queen had never moved and still remained on d8. This becomes blatantly obvious in his choice of a 23rd move, but probably also influenced his selection of some previous moves. 21. ... Bxc6 22. bxc6 Rxc6

23. Qxd5?? Probably the biggest one-move blunder ever made in a world-record-setting blindfold display. As noted, Alekhine must simply have forgotten that Black had moved his queen to d6 on his 13th move. If Black’s queen were still at d8,White would have obtained the superior position by this capture. 23. ... Qxd5 Alekhine’s blunder is the kind you would expect to see in players who are just beginning to try blindfold chess and perhaps facing only one or two opponents at once, not 28! 0–1 [Skinner, L. M., & Verhoeven, R. G. P. (1998). Alexander Alekhine’s chess games, 1902-1946. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, p. 232]

Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 06:48 PM  |  Comments: 0

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Grandmaster Blindfold Ratings, 2008

When I was a spectator at the 16th combined blindfold-and-rapid Amber tourney held in Nice in March of 2008, I became acquainted with Geurt Gijssen of the Netherlands, who has been either one of the main arbiters or the main arbiter at all16 of these events. He mentioned that he had recently calculated individual ratings for the blindfold half of the Amber tourneys since their inception in 1993, but had not published them. A few months afterwards he graciously sent me a copy of these ratings, which included results from the 2008 event, and he mentioned that I could publish them if they seemed to be of general interest. They arrived too late for inclusion in our book, but I thought many chess aficianados would still like to see them. A description of the specific conditions or rules for the blindfold games, played with individual computers and no visible positions, as well as a list of all the winners since 1993 and some of the games, can be found in our book on pages 141-146 and in the games section.

GM Levon Aronian of Armenia won the 2008 event, scoring 6.5 points out of 11 in the blindfold half and 8 out of 11 in the rapid half, outdistancing those finishing second by 2.5 points when the two scores were combined (14.5 total points). In the blindfold half he was tied at 6.5 points with GMs Kramnik, Morozevich, and Topalov, and he suffered no losses in a blindfold game. The following ratings do not include this year’s tourney, held just over a month ago, which was again won by Aronian, scoring 7 points out of 11 in both the blindfold half and the rapid half. However, his 14 total points placed him only 0.5 points ahead of the second-place finishers this time! He lost only one blindfold game, whereas all the other participants lost at least two. His total blindfold score was tied by GMs Carlsen and Kramnik.

In Gijssen’s rating calculations he used as a starting point the “normal” FIDE rating that a player had achieved in regular tournaments just before the beginning of his or her first Amber blindfold tourney. This seems reasonable, but a critic might argue that blindfold chess is a different variety of chess from regular chess and using regular FIDE chess ratings gives the highest ranked players a rating advantage to begin with. An alternative might be to have all players start with the same rating, say 2650. However, it is unlikely that the below rankings would be very much different if this second method had been used.

Thirty-seven players played in the 16 events that were taken into consideration in calculating the blindfold ratings. However, some players played in only one or very few of the Amber tourneys. GM Ivanchuk is the only player who competed in every single one of them. Below we list the 2008 blindfold ratings achieved by players who participated in at least three of the events, since scores in only one or two events may not be too meaningful statistically. (Unfortunately, this eliminates powerful young players like Carlsen, Karjakin, and Radjabov, whose first Amber tourneys were in 2007 or 2008.)

1. Morozevich 2811
2. Kramnik 2809
3. Anand 2761
4-5. Aronian 2744
4-5. Svidler 2744
6-7. Leko 2735
6-7. Topalov 2735
8. Shirov 2734
9. Ivanchuk 2707
10. Kamsky 2705
11. Gelfand 2686
12. Karpov 2681
13. Bareev 2667
14. Lautier 2662
15. Almasi 2656
16. Vallejo 2653
17. van Wely 2631
18. Nikolic 2630
19. Piket 2629
20. Polgar, J. 2612
21. Ljubojevic 2579

So far as I know, GM Kasparov is the only top player to refuse all invitations to the Amber tourneys. He said he wanted to stay “mentally well” and was apparently anxious about “going mad” if he played blindfold chess seriously (see pages 126-127 of our book for more discussion of Kasparov’s refusals).

It is interesting to note that the top ranked players in regular chess are clearly also the ones who do best in blindfold chess. Perhaps some reader would like to examine the average ratings of the above players since 1993 in regular chess and see how closely they correlate with their blindfold ratings.

Permalink  |  Posted by Eliot Hearst at 03:58 PM  |  Comments: 1

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