Amber

The 2010 Amber Chess Tournament is in progress at the moment. Each day the players play two rapid games, one of which blindfold. ICC has been providing great coverage of the event, and todays analysis by GM Akobian and IM Pein was especially good. I remember IM Pein as the host of the 2009 London Chess Classic, which I was fortunate enough to attend, seeing Carlsen, Kramnik, Nakamura and Ni Hua as well as the top English GMs in person. Getting to see the post game analysis by the players was especially enjoyable.

The position below is from todays Amber blindfold match between Gashimov and Ivanchuk, with black to move.



Ivanchuk played ...Ng4! The strongest move in the position, and not at all obvious. The entire game is very complicated and well worth a look - blindfold inspiration.

Today I played my eleventh semi-blindfold game, this time under Handicap (iv) (i.e. under semi-blindfold conditions, and further with all my pieces except pawns removed), against a 1636 opponent. See below for the starting position as I saw it.



Now this is more like it! I think I will probably play the next ten games under these conditions, unless I unexpectedly find it quite easy. I have decided to set myself a criteria for moving up to the next handicap - I must either have a higher rating than I held prior to this game (1550) after five games, or a rating above 1500 after ten games (if this is not met then I stay at this level until I finally exceed 1500). I think 1500 is a fair threshold as it's ~250 points below my 'sighted' account. If anyone else decides to follow the same gradual approach to learning blindfold I would suggest they consider doing the same - picking a rating threshold they must exceed at every blindfold handicap stage, set a specific amount (e.g. 200 points) below their standard 'sighted' rating.

Play online chess

I was surprised by how quickly this game went from pretty equal (e.g. after 15.a3) to a win. My opponent resigned quite early, but his position was - as GM S Polgar would put it - "not enviable" (with the h7 knight in particular being "very sad").


The above image shows the end position as I could see it. The game did not get complicated enough to make keeping track of the pieces difficult during the game, although I almost forgot that I had played Qc2. I'm happy with the result, but don't expect the future games to go so smoothly.