Close your eyes!

In yesterday entry, i talked about how i love Spragget’s writing at his homepage. One point he emphasized on becoming a master player is about “Board Control and Mastery”. He mentioned that a lot of players are having difficulty in visualizing a chess board. Players could not tell what colors for certain squares and what squares attached to certain squares in a diagonal, rank and files. Players hard to visualize the movement of pieces, the combination arise etc.

He shared with us his experience:

In the ’80’s appeared a new generation of chess stars from the Soviet Union who created quite a splash, not so much because they were such fantastic players, but because of what they did at the chess board: they spent more time looking at the cieling (or the spectators) than they did at the chessboard. I remember the first time I played Shirov. It was ‘90, Paris, and I was paired against this relatively unknown youngster from Latvia. I played my normal game, and was quite astonished when I noticed that he would only look at the board from time to time, and that most of the time he spent staring at the ceiling! I still remember thinking that there was something quite wrong with the fellow! “I will have no problem with this fellow”‘ I thought. But was I amazed by what this guy “saw”!! I still am impressed.

He suggests that we put on the effort to develop our own exercise to improve our board control and mastery. Practise continously things like thinking without moving the pieces or closing eyes for 5 minutes and think and then open and look at the board again.

I really believe this kind of exercise will help me to improve my in-the-head analysis. It will sharpen our blunt mind. (Only until now that i’m too lazy to use my mind to that effect.)

Yasser Seirawan when interviewed on how he improves his analytical skills, he said it is necessary to analyze and calculate in the head without moving the pieces and see how far we can hold and see the position until it becomes unclear. To him, it is a sign of improvement if we are able to picture with clarity, even if its get complicated with sacrifices.

Alexander Kotov thought so too and became master by having such training. He wrote a lot about this at his famous book:Think Like a Grandmaster (Nice read!)

Look at this example:

        

I played black in the above position in a blitz game. During the game, I evaluated this position as better for black because knight is more mobile and able to penetrate better in this kind of position. The truth is that the position is about equal. In time trouble, i looked at e4 and g4 squares and followed my hunch moving my knight to g8, 40. … Ng8. This moves is inaccurate since 41. fxg5 and later 42. h4 will give white advantage. But my opponent moved his bishop to d3, attacking the pawn at f5. So, 41. … Ne7 is a natural move, defending the pawn. White took pawn at g5 and taking back the pawn hxg5 should have come automatically in blitz; only that i have a better move - Nc6 checkmate!, end the game. This would not happen if both players have better visualisation of the board and pieces. (Pssstt, can you follow the move in this narration? If yes, you can visualize quite ok haha!)

So, start closed your eyes and visualize!