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I have aphantasia and I play chess (albeit not very well...) Honestly, I think that aphantasia is a bit overhyped; I can do virtually all the things that peopl

by johnfn 2y ago

I have aphantasia and I play chess (albeit not very well...) Honestly, I think that aphantasia is a bit overhyped; I can do virtually all the things that people with normal mental imagery can do, except I suppose actually visualize the thing in my mind. The way that it works feels akin to a blind man groping in a dark room. If I try to visualize a chess board, of course I only "see" blackness (or nothing), but if you ask me what square is at e2, I can kind of mentally "feel" in that area and know that there's a king pawn there. And I can kind of "feel" below it that there's a king, and a queen, etc. Normal people see things in their visual imagery by directing their attention at a spot in their mind, seeing it, and then registering what they saw. I just skip the middle step.

OvbiousError 2y ago
Interesting. As an aphant I can perhaps do what you describe, what I can absolutely not do is e.g. calculate moves with my eyes closed. I can calculate a couple of moves in, but then it gets hard, and I'm not sure if this is something solveable with practice or just a hard stop. Similarly, the top chess players can remember a lot of the matches they played, and others they studied. This is not something my brain is able to do, period. Similar to how I have less personal memories than a lot of other people.
KK7NIL 2y ago
I'm about 1800-2000 on lichess and have almost complete aphantasia and I do feel like it really hurts me, especially in very sharp middlegame positions. When calculating I have to explicitly list out what squares are attacked by what pieces, which is inevitably very slow. Long term positional planning isn't a problem as I can feel my way around a position pretty well and can imagine positions I want to reach, but detail heavy calculation is much harder. Doing a lot of deep puzzles is the best antidote I've found.(And blind chess, but that's really hard)

by johnfn 2y ago

OvbiousError 2y ago

Interesting. As an aphant I can perhaps do what you describe, what I can absolutely not do is e.g. calculate moves with my eyes closed. I can calculate a couple of moves in, but then it gets hard, and I'm not sure if this is something solveable with practice or just a hard stop. Similarly, the top chess players can remember a lot of the matches they played, and others they studied. This is not something my brain is able to do, period. Similar to how I have less personal memories than a lot of other people.

KK7NIL 2y ago

I'm about 1800-2000 on lichess and have almost complete aphantasia and I do feel like it really hurts me, especially in very sharp middlegame positions. When calculating I have to explicitly list out what squares are attacked by what pieces, which is inevitably very slow. Long term positional planning isn't a problem as I can feel my way around a position pretty well and can imagine positions I want to reach, but detail heavy calculation is much harder. Doing a lot of deep puzzles is the best antidote I've found.(And blind chess, but that's really hard)