Blindfold chess: what it trains, and whether it is safe

Blindfold chess is a game played without seeing or touching the pieces. Both players hold the position in their heads and announce moves in notation: "knight f3", "bishop takes e5". It is useful because it trains the two things that decide most games between club players, calculating a line without moving the pieces and remembering where everything stands at the end of it. It is not dangerous for an amateur playing one game. It is tiring, and the tiredness is the practical limit.

How blindfold chess works

You start from the normal position, which you already know by heart. Each move is spoken or written in algebraic notation and both players update the position in memory. The rules, the clock and the result are the same as in a game on a board. The only difference is that the board is in your head, and you redraw it after every move.

Wikipedia's article on blindfold chess sums up the research this way: what matters is acquired chess knowledge and the ability to carry out spatial operations in the mind's eye. In practice the picture is made of chunks (a castled king, a pawn chain) and only the squares that matter for the current move are sharp.

What it trains

Each of these improves in a way you can feel.

• Calculation. On a board you can cheat by moving a piece and looking. Blindfold, every candidate move has to be worked out in your head, which is what tournament rules demand of you at the board anyway.
• Board memory. After four or five moves of a line, most players lose track of one piece. Blindfold play makes that piece the whole problem, and the problem shrinks with practice.
• Reading notation. When you can follow "1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6" without a board, chess books and annotated games open up.

Openings and endgame technique still have to be learned on their own. Blindfold work sharpens the calculation you use for both.

Is blindfold chess dangerous?

For a club player, no. The health warnings you may have read concern something else: masters playing dozens of games at once, blindfold, for many hours. Wikipedia's article records that simultaneous blindfold exhibitions were banned in the USSR in 1930 as a health hazard, that Mikhail Botvinnik warned against them, and that players report blindfold play is more tiring than normal play even at faster time controls. The exhibitions it lists show the scale: Alekhine played 26 games at once in New York in 1924, Koltanowski 34 in Edinburgh in 1937 over 13 hours, Najdorf 40 in Rosario in 1943.

One game against a friend, or a ten-minute drill, is a different activity. The symptom to respect is a headache or the feeling that the position has gone blurry. Stop, look at a board, and come back tomorrow.

How long does it take to learn?

Nobody can give you a number of weeks, because the answer depends on where you start. Here is the order of skills with a test for each, so you know what to work on next.

1. Square names. You can say the name of any square on an empty board in under two seconds, from either side. Until this is automatic, blindfold play is guesswork. How to learn chess coordinates covers this stage.
2. Square colours. Asked "c6", you answer "light" without thinking. This is what lets you know whether a bishop can ever reach a square. The square colours guide gives the rule.
3. Single-piece tracking. A knight starts on g1. Someone says "f3, d4, f5". You name where it is and what colour square it stands on. The Blindfold Squares drill does this: one move at level 1, up to four moves at level 4.
4. A known line. You recite the first eight moves of an opening you play and can name every piece's square at the end.
5. A game. A friend reads their moves aloud and you answer with yours. The first one will fall apart somewhere in the middlegame. That is normal.

Ten minutes a day at whichever stage you are on moves you through them. An hour once a week does not.

How to play blindfold chess online

Lichess has a blindfold mode that hides the pieces while you play. You switch it on from the menu next to the board, for that game. It works for tactics too: look at a puzzle, hide the pieces, then solve it from memory. Apps with voice input let you say your moves instead of clicking blank squares, which is closer to the real thing.

Before online games, drill. The Blindfold Squares drill on ChessTrainer.ai reads a sequence of moves aloud and asks for the final square. Level 1 is free; the longer sequences are in Pro. You answer by voice or by tapping.

Common mistakes

• Starting with a full game. Most people try one, lose the position by move ten and conclude they cannot do it. Start with one piece and one move.
• Skipping square colours. Without them you cannot tell which diagonal a bishop is on, and bishops are where blindfold positions go wrong first.
• Training only from the White side. Flip the board in every drill so "e4" is the same square whichever way you sit.
• Long sessions. Twenty minutes blindfold is heavy work. Stop while you are still accurate.

Start tonight with a knight on g1 and three moves. If you can say where it ends and what colour it stands on, go to four.