Author: Andrew Williams
Date: 15:42:42 06/07/03
Go up one level in this thread
On June 07, 2003 at 18:38:14, Omid David Tabibi wrote: >On June 07, 2003 at 18:17:23, Russell Reagan wrote: > >>On June 07, 2003 at 14:46:17, Alan Grotier wrote: >> >>> I have tried playing on the 3-D boards in F8 but still prefer the flat 2-D. >>> >>> I while ago I dragged-out my Miphisto Vancouver 12hz and for a while had a >>> hard time playing on a real board.Question of perspectives.Nothing to do >>> to do with the great program that has always thrashed me. >> >>I had the same problem. I played most of my games online for a long time, and my >>OTB play suffered. Online the basic tactics came easily, as well as most simple >>combinations, and I did pretty well online. OTB, I was horrible. I felt very >>uneasy. I felt like I couldn't "see" the board very well. I hung pieces >>frequently and lost to 600-900 players :( A few things that I recommend to get >>your OTB vision back are: >> >>1. Play OTB chess (obviously) >> >>2. Setup tactical problems on a board and try to solve them. Take your time, >>because a main goal of yours is to get your "chess vision" back for OTB play, so >>spending time focused in that mindset will help you feel better about what you >>can see easily OTB. I particularly found doing mate in 3 problems on a board, >>from Polgar's "big book", to be very helpful (I guess since it was almost all >>calculation). >> >>3. Try playing over games blindfold. It isn't as hard as it might sound. In >>fact, it's not hard at all. Anyone can do it. The hard part is having the >>patience to carry it out. It can take a long time to play over a single game in >>your head at first. I was able to do it on my first try, but it took me over an >>hour, and it was pretty boring, but it helped a lot. One book I highly recommend >>if you find this interesting is The Inner Game of Chess by Soltis. He discusses >>how to calculate, and teaches you how to be able to play over games blindfold. >> > >Playing blindfold is not hard at all. You just have to "live" in the 64 squares >:) For example, you have to intuitively know that a bishop on b3 attacks g8, and >not start finding out the path (assuming that you don't have an empty board to >cheat!). > >Once I played a simultaneous blindfold against 8 (weak) players. Needless to say >that after finishing the games I slept for 16 hours and had a severe headache >for the rest of week... (I never repeated that insane experience) > > >From http://www.sigschess.com/news_32103.html : > >"Russians, however, were not always so eager to let their chess greats >play blindfold. It's commonly reported that Soviet chess authorities >banned blindfold chess because of possible health dangers. > >"The belief had some precedent. Some early blindfold greats following >Philidor suffered from insanity. > >"American chess legend Paul Morphy, who dazzled 19th century Parisian >crowds with blindfold exhibitions against the strongest French players, >went insane and died at age 47 in New Orleans in 1884. > >"Another American blindfold wizard, Harry Pillsbury, went insane, and >many blamed it on his excessive blindfold play." > > > Interesting to speculate about causality here. Is it that blindfold chess makes you go insane, or that only insane people voluntarily play blindfolded? I'm not speculating about you, Omid; you had the good sense to only try it once!! AW
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