"help bot" wrote in message
...
On Feb 11, 4:32 pm, "Chess One" wrote:

I am currently playing a blind player from Yugoslavia, ["Mr. M."] he is
rated almost 1900 cc. He is not doing great with white or black in our
games, BUT if I also played blind he would take me to the cleaners! Does
anyone out there know any unsighted players? Phil Innes

A player named Joe Kennedy, from Indiana, won the
1994 U.S. Blind Championship, but that appears to be
his last rated event. As I recall, he used a funky chess
board which likely threw off a lot of sighted opponents,
although they had the option of insisting on a separate
board with "normal" colors.

Considering the mutual disadvantages, this is still something to achieve. A
Russian bloke of master strength once gave me a set of 'Grandmaster' pieces,
so of course, we had to play a game with it, but we didn't have a board. So
we set the pieces up on one of those wire-mesh benches and 'imagined' where
the board was. Fortunately, most of the pieces came off early, and we agreed
to a draw at move 30 - but I had a headache! [it was also 95 degrees]

I also recall playing a much weaker blind opponent
many, many years ago; this fellow used a peg set,
and was truly 100% blind.

This same Russian player also made sensory boards, and I believe one of his
earliest designs was for a strange looking stepped-board, with pegholes -
only it could either record your move to computer, or transmit it over the
net.

He asked me to keep
score for him, on a separate sheet and using the old
descriptive notation, and I willingly obliged only to find
myself in time trouble as a result! It is very easy to
underestimate someone who can't see what's going
on on the board, by assuming that /you can/!

Well, there's a point.

I mostly play corres chess now on computer, maybe about 20 games at any
time - and there is the complete luxury of seeing an incoming move, looking
at the position for 5 seconds - and if nothing happens - that is, no
insight, /pass!/, and move to the next game.

As soon as I start to think about the move, I know I saw nothing; therefore
/pass/ to the next game without moving. After 3 or 4 looks, then thinking is
all that's left, so I do that.

But most of the time I don't see into the position! And that is mortifying.

There is another phenomena where you effortlessly see everything - sometimes
people call it 'the flow', [and in most noted in chess, but I think it
happens elsewhere] but I have rarely experienced that.

Phil Innes


-- help bot