Saturday, May 05, 2007

Blindfold chess variants

Blindfold chess is the ultimate test of being able to visualize and memorize the board. Here are three variants that require less skill and additionally look bizarre when being played.

Yoko Ono chess is played with two sets of white pieces. The players need to remember which pieces were theirs.

Rank swap chess uses the normally back-rank pieces to represent the pawns, and the pawns to represent the back rank pieces. The players need to remember what each pawn stands for.

Checkers chess is a more extreme variation, each player starts with 16 identical counters to represent his or her pieces.

Each of these variations requires an adjudicator to prevent illegal moves, and close oversight to prevent cheating. A player might try to minutely adjust the position or orientation of a piece within a square to remember what the piece is.

1 comment :

Tom Chivers said...

These variations might have a learning benefit. The evidence seems to be, the stronger the player, the more abstract their mental chess set: ie, no detail on the pieces, no colour, etc. Maybe some of these would simulate that.