World-class players rise to the challenge of playing blindfold chess.
DO YOU get a kick from looking at an empty chess board? I don’t, not any more.
Nowadays, I prefer to play my chess with real pieces in front of me, not with pieces floating around in my mind’s eye. Controlling real chess pieces can be difficult enough, what more with imaginary pieces?
But there are people who believe that there is a real challenge playing such games. Blindfold chess, it is called. Chess played without sight of the chess board. However, I consider blindfold chess to fall within the realms of novelty chess.
Brain fight: Cuba’s Leinier Dominguez concentrating hard on how to get the better of former Fide chess champion Ruslan Ponomariov.
How far can one go in the game? If one is completely blindfolded without seeing the chess board, one’s memory must be good enough to remember all those previous moves and imaginative enough to see positions well ahead.
It takes more than mere chess mortals to play traditional blindfold chess. That is why the traditional Amber Blindfold and Rapid tournament, now going on in Nice, France, employs a slightly different version of blindfold chess. Maybe traditional blindfold chess is also beyond the powers of the new chess gods and they have to try something different.
What’s happening in this Amber tournament, already in its 19th year, is that for the blindfold games, the chess gods are staring at an empty chess board on their laptops. There are no digital pieces to shift around. Instead, only the text of the last played move will be shown to the players.
But for these players, this is enough help already. Looking at the empty chess boards is enough aid to help them remember moves and visualise games in their minds.
And what great games they are playing! Even though they are engaged in blindfold chess, their creativity has not been stifled. Take, for example, this game which was played in the very first round. Mind you, the two protagonists are world-class players.
Magnus Carlsen – Vasily Ivanchuk, 19th Amber (blindfold)
1.a3 (This in itself is a great surprise, as Carlsen steers the game out of opening theory and into a new direction. However, Ivanchuk is equal to the occasion.) 1….Nf6 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 d5 4.e3 Bg4 5.h3 Bh5 6.cxd5 cxd5 7.Nc3 Nc6 8.Bb5 Rc8 9.g4 Bg6 10.Qa4 Nd7 11.b4 e6 12.Bb2 Be7 13.Bxc6 bxc6 14.Qxa7 c5 15.Qa6 0-0 16.Qe2 c4 17.e4 d4 18.Nb5 e5 19.h4 Qb6 20.a4 Qb7 21.Ng5 h6 22.h5 hxg5 23.hxg6 fxg6 (It’s rare to see this type of pawn structure among top players but it’s even rarer to see someone win a game despite having this pawn structure.) 24.f3 Bxb4 25.Ba3 Bxa3 26.Rxa3 Qb6 27.Qh2 Qc5 28.Qh7+ Kf7 29.Ra1 Nf6 30.Qh2 Ra8 31.d3 (Even though Black is better, this move has got to be an oversight.) 31….Qxb5 (Winning the piece and the game) 0-1
The Amber tournament continues until April 25. Apart from Carlsen and Ivanchuk, the other players are Ruslan Ponomariov (a former Fide world champion), Vugar Gashimov, Peter Svidler, Levon Aronian, Alexander Grischuk, Sergey Karjakin, Vladimir Kramnik (the former classical chess world champion), Leinier Dominguez, Jan Smeets and Boris Gelfand.
To follow the tournament online, go to amberchess2010.com/index.html. Today is already the sixth round of the competition. There are five more days to go.