This newsgroup definitely has a lot of chess notation in the posts.

Just curious, but how do you guys read the chess notation? Do you have
a chess board next to your computer to help you deal with with the e4,
na4, ra2? Or do you just have a computer chess program, and copy and
paste it into it? Or do you do you understand it completely in your
head?

What I do is use my Palm device and run PocketChess. It helps me
interpret any chess notation which someone puts in their post. I
wonder if grandmasters can read chess notation of entire games off the
top of their head without a chess board or a program!

-Chris

From: (Christopher)
Date: 12/08/03 04:00 GMT Daylight Time
Message-id:

This newsgroup definitely has a lot of chess notation in the posts.

Just curious, but how do you guys read the chess notation? Do you have
a chess board next to your computer to help you deal with with the e4,
na4, ra2?

No.


Or do you just have a computer chess program, and copy and
paste it into it?

Yes.

Or do you do you understand it completely in your
head?


Yes.

This gets easier the more you practise it.

What I do is use my Palm device and run PocketChess. It helps me
interpret any chess notation which someone puts in their post. I
wonder if grandmasters can read chess notation of entire games off the
top of their head without a chess board or a program!


Yes. This is what blindfold chess is, in effect. Some Grandmasters are renowned
for their ability to play "blindfold" against many opponents simultaneously. I
believe that Mikhail Tal set the record for the greatest number of simultaneous
opponents, but if I'm wrong, someone will correct me, no doubt.

Mark

-remove- (Mhoulsby) wrote in message ...
(snipped)
Yes. This is what blindfold chess is, in effect. Some Grandmasters are
renowned for their ability to play "blindfold" against many opponents
simultaneously. I believe that Mikhail Tal set the record for the greatest
number of simultaneous opponents, but if I'm wrong, someone will correct me,
no doubt.

Dear Mr. Houlsby,

As you might have noticed here, even if you are *not* wrong, someone may
*attempt* to correct you. :-)

There has been some dispute about who really has played the most opponents in
blindfold simultaneous exhibitions. Evidently, there were differences among
those exhibitions' playing conditions and the monitoring of those conditions.

As far as I know, here are the principal contenders for the world record:

1) At Edinburgh in 1937, George Koltanowski played 34 games (+24 =10).
Some people claim this feat should stand as the world record because the
playing conditions were monitored more strictly than in Najdorf's and
Flesch's subsequent "record-breaking" exhibitions.

2) At Sao Paulo in 1947, Miguel Najdorf played 45 games (+39 =4 -2).
Some people claim that this feat should stand as the world record because
Flesch had an unfair advantage over Najdorf in the playing conditions.

3) At Budapest in 1960, Janos Flesch played 52 games (+31 =18 -3).
There have been some reports that Flesch was assisted by having been
permitted to check the scores of games played.

At San Francisco in 1960, George Koltanowski played 56 blindfold games
(+50 =6) consecutively, *not* simultaneously. (In an article for the
Internet Chess Club, IM Danny Kopec mistakenly wrote that this feat should
stand as the world record for a *simultaneous* blindfold exhibition.)

So now the blindfold chess historians may prepare their opening arguments. :-)

--Nick

-remove- (Mhoulsby) wrote in message ...
(snipped)
This is what blindfold chess is, in effect. Some Grandmasters are renowned
for their ability to play "blindfold" against many opponents simultaneously.
I believe that Mikhail Tal set the record for the greatest number of
simultaneous opponents, but if I'm wrong, someone will correct me, no doubt.

Dear Mr. Houlsby,

Beginning in 1930, blindfold chess simultaneous exhibitions were banned in
the Soviet Union.

At Hanover in 1902, Harry Pillsbury played blindfold chess simultaneously
against 21 opponents (who all were competing in Hauptturniere for the master
title), scoring +3 =11 -7.

At Sao Paulo in 1925, Richard Reti played 29 blindfold games simultaneously.
At Chicago in 1933, Alexander Alekhine played 32 blindfold games simultaneously.

Eliot Hearst and John Knott have been writing a comprehensive book on
blindfold chess.

--Nick

(Nick) wrote in message om...
...
There has been some dispute about who really has played the most opponents in
blindfold simultaneous exhibitions. Evidently, there were differences among
those exhibitions' playing conditions and the monitoring of those conditions.

As far as I know, here are the principal contenders for the world record:

1) At Edinburgh in 1937, George Koltanowski played 34 games (+24 =10).
Some people claim this feat should stand as the world record because the
playing conditions were monitored more strictly than in Najdorf's and
Flesch's subsequent "record-breaking" exhibitions.

2) At Sao Paulo in 1947, Miguel Najdorf played 45 games (+39 =4 -2).
Some people claim that this feat should stand as the world record because
Flesch had an unfair advantage over Najdorf in the playing conditions.

3) At Budapest in 1960, Janos Flesch played 52 games (+31 =18 -3).
There have been some reports that Flesch was assisted by having been
permitted to check the scores of games played.

At San Francisco in 1960, George Koltanowski played 56 blindfold games
(+50 =6) consecutively, *not* simultaneously. (In an article for the
Internet Chess Club, IM Danny Kopec mistakenly wrote that this feat should
stand as the world record for a *simultaneous* blindfold exhibition.)

As far as I know, no one has made a serious attempt at this disputed world
record since 1960. Are there any hypotheses about that long absence?

'If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest,
I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible
in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of
our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so
obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so
tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way, but our
powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.'
--Jane Austen (Mansfield Park)

--Nick

(Nick) wrote in message . com...
-remove- (Mhoulsby) wrote in message ...
From: (Christopher)
Message-id:
(snipped)
I wonder if grandmasters can read chess notation of entire games off
the top of their head without a chess board or a program!

Yes. This is what blindfold chess is, in effect. Some Grandmasters are
renowned for their ability to play "blindfold" against many opponents
simultaneously....

It's not too difficult to learn how to play a blindfold chess game. Even
I have been able to play blindfold against a few opponents simultaneously.

'As it is not possible for any man to learn the art of memory, except he have
a natural memory befo so it is not possible for any man to attain any great
wit by travel, except he have the grounds of it rooted in him before.'
--Thomas Nashe (The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton)

There's no evidence that people in the 18th or 19th centuries had intrinsically
weaker memories than people today. Yet people in the 18th or 19th centuries
were highly impressed by some feats of blindfold chess that would seem rather
commonplace today.

"When Philidor engaged three players 'blindfold' simultaneously in the
eighteenth century (Berlin 1750), it was hailed as one of the greatest feats
ever achieved by the mind of man. Morphy played eight strong players blindfold
in the Cafe de la Regence (Paris 1858), winning six and drawing two in an
exhibition lasting more than ten hours. He was hoisted onto the shoulders of
his admirers and carried triumphantly into the streets of Paris. But these
feats are now considered relatively routine."
--Anthony Saidy and Norman Lessing (The World of Chess, pp. 19-22)

In my view, a human psychological 'barrier' had to be surmounted before more
people could further test the limits of their human potential. For instance,
on 6 May 1954, Roger Bannister became the first runner to break the 'four
minute barrier' in the mile race, when many people had believed that his feat
would have been physically impossible for any human being. Soon after that
longstanding 'barrier' had been broken initially, other runners also began
to break that 'barrier', which had been psychological, not physiological.

'Nothing is achieved before it be thoroughly attempted, and lying still, doth
never go forward.'
--Philip Sidney (Arcadia)

--Nick