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Imagine playing chess while blindfolded. Now imagine playing against 33 people simultaneously while being blindfolded and winning 29 games and losing none. This

by petilon 12y ago

Imagine playing chess while blindfolded. Now imagine playing against 33 people simultaneously while being blindfolded and winning 29 games and losing none. This was done by American Grandmaster Timur Gareev, see: http://www.uschess.org/content/view/12187/709 http://www.uschess.org/content/view/12187/709 To do this you have keep 33 chessboards in your mind simultaneously, and track the movement of 32 pieces on each board.

bluecalm 12y ago
The record is even higher at 46 boards: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_chess#Simultaneous_and_blindfold_records http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_chess#... Playing a game blindfolded seems like incredible feat if you are not serious/competitive chess player. Playing several sounds like magic. The thing is though that at certain level almost anybody can play decent blindfolded game, especially vs much weaker opponent. Playing several takes some practice but it's mainly connected with not being confused (anchoring positions to something so it's easy to switch). It's really not that much more taxing on the brain as chess players have tons of positions memorized anyway. I am talking about 2-3-4 games. 10 is already very impressive to me and things like 20+ is insane even for competitive chess player standards.
- petegrif 12y ago
  IT sounds like an incredible feat even if you are a serious/competitive chess player. And whilst it is indeed the case that 'at a certain level almost anybody can play a decent blindfolded game' that level is high.
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    I have a colleague at work who plays blindfold chess with his nine year old son on road trips. Well, it's not actually blindfold chess, neither of them are wearing blind folds - they just are able to play games without a board, which, if you think about it, is pretty amazing.
    - Tloewald 12y ago
      You just hope that the son doesn't make an especially brilliant move and cause a car accident.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - muyuu 12y ago
    I can play blindfolded and I'm nowhere near Kramnik. I've been around 17 hundreds in ELO when I played the most. I usually beat my beginner family members playing blindfolded against them. I don't think about individual pieces placed in a board but rather interactions and moves. Pieces are not located at random, you can remember where pieces are because you remember the plans, the threats and the moves that lead to a setup. If I had to remember seemingly random arrangements of pieces it would be a completely different story and much harder. Might help that I also played Shogi rather intensely and after being used to Shogi, the chess board feels very small.
hackuser 12y ago
On one hand that's amazing. On the other, if you're a sysadmin, could you remember the configurations of 33 servers? It's not hard to imagine.
- rwallace 12y ago
  Not well enough to admin them blindfold, I couldn't!
ap22213 12y ago
I decided to do a total re-write of one of my applications over the weekend. 30k lines later, I'm wondering if this at all feels similar. When I'm alert, jacked up on caffeine, I can keep track of 100s of classes, 1000s of methods and member variables. When, I'm in the flow, I basically write the program in my head and let the fingers be my mouth.
- cdelsolar 12y ago
  You rewrote an entire 30K line app in a weekend?? I have a side project that I really need to rewrite and I keep predicting it will take me weeks. Maybe I should actually give it a try.
  - ap22213 12y ago
    Don't get me wrong, some of it was refactoring. So, there was quite a lot of copy-paste / text replacements. A lot of moving things here and there. Splitting classes. Encapsulating stuff. Creating new libraries. Etc. There's a fair amount of new code... I'd say 10000 - 15000 lines, some of which I generated.
    - cdelsolar 12y ago
      Yeah - I actually need to add a lot of new functionality and change the language, so it might take me a while longer. Still pretty cool. Refactoring can be fun.

by petilon 12y ago

bluecalm 12y ago

The record is even higher at 46 boards: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_chess#Simultaneous_and_blindfold_records http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_chess#... Playing a game blindfolded seems like incredible feat if you are not serious/competitive chess player. Playing several sounds like magic. The thing is though that at certain level almost anybody can play decent blindfolded game, especially vs much weaker opponent. Playing several takes some practice but it's mainly connected with not being confused (anchoring positions to something so it's easy to switch). It's really not that much more taxing on the brain as chess players have tons of positions memorized anyway. I am talking about 2-3-4 games. 10 is already very impressive to me and things like 20+ is insane even for competitive chess player standards.

petegrif 12y ago
IT sounds like an incredible feat even if you are a serious/competitive chess player. And whilst it is indeed the case that 'at a certain level almost anybody can play a decent blindfolded game' that level is high.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  I have a colleague at work who plays blindfold chess with his nine year old son on road trips. Well, it's not actually blindfold chess, neither of them are wearing blind folds - they just are able to play games without a board, which, if you think about it, is pretty amazing.
  - Tloewald 12y ago
    You just hope that the son doesn't make an especially brilliant move and cause a car accident.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- muyuu 12y ago
  I can play blindfolded and I'm nowhere near Kramnik. I've been around 17 hundreds in ELO when I played the most. I usually beat my beginner family members playing blindfolded against them. I don't think about individual pieces placed in a board but rather interactions and moves. Pieces are not located at random, you can remember where pieces are because you remember the plans, the threats and the moves that lead to a setup. If I had to remember seemingly random arrangements of pieces it would be a completely different story and much harder. Might help that I also played Shogi rather intensely and after being used to Shogi, the chess board feels very small.

hackuser 12y ago

On one hand that's amazing. On the other, if you're a sysadmin, could you remember the configurations of 33 servers? It's not hard to imagine.

rwallace 12y ago
Not well enough to admin them blindfold, I couldn't!

ap22213 12y ago

I decided to do a total re-write of one of my applications over the weekend. 30k lines later, I'm wondering if this at all feels similar. When I'm alert, jacked up on caffeine, I can keep track of 100s of classes, 1000s of methods and member variables. When, I'm in the flow, I basically write the program in my head and let the fingers be my mouth.

cdelsolar 12y ago
You rewrote an entire 30K line app in a weekend?? I have a side project that I really need to rewrite and I keep predicting it will take me weeks. Maybe I should actually give it a try.
- ap22213 12y ago
  Don't get me wrong, some of it was refactoring. So, there was quite a lot of copy-paste / text replacements. A lot of moving things here and there. Splitting classes. Encapsulating stuff. Creating new libraries. Etc. There's a fair amount of new code... I'd say 10000 - 15000 lines, some of which I generated.
  - cdelsolar 12y ago
    Yeah - I actually need to add a lot of new functionality and change the language, so it might take me a while longer. Still pretty cool. Refactoring can be fun.