My first blindfold games

Yesturday I played blindfold for the first time, two semi-serious games. They were played with a friend who I rudely had my back turned toward for the duration, as I was looking at an empty chess board. Both games were fairly short.

The first game I was White and played the King's Gambit. See the game viewer for the game and annotation.

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So that was over pretty quickly. I lost to a fairly clever tactic, but had been playing a little dubiously for my opponent to get that opportunity. Then again, it may just be that this game exposes my difficulties with any kind of complex tactics when under blindfold.

In game two I was Black and chose my familiar Caro-Kann. See game viewer for details.

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Perhaps I should have titled this post "Trust in yourself and you can achieve anything!". My twentieth handicapped game (and second blindfold game) was my first blindfold victory. Which is nice.

This blog began with the aim of following my attempt to develop 'a moderate ability' in blindfold chess, and it seems that today marks the end of the beginning...all before Google even got around to indexing this blog. Of course I still have a long way to go, and it will perhaps be most interesting to see whether this practice will show any tangible returns in 'sighted' play. That I shall find out in a few months time.

In the mean time I can discard the 'semi-blindfold' post labels for ever more.