Blindfold Chess: History, Psychology, Techniques and Important Games

Sports History Chess Board Games Cognitive Psychology Memory Training Mental Skills Educational Games

Blindfold Chess: History, Psychology, Techniques and Important Games is the only full-length treatise ever written on the mind-bending art of playing without sight of the board. In 437 tightly-packed pages, psychologists and chess historians Eliot Hearst and John Knott trace the practice from 10th-century Arabia to 21st-century grandmaster exhibitions, explaining how champions like Alekhine, Koltanowski and Najdorf could juggle up to 45 simultaneous blindfold games. Along the way the authors decode the memory techniques, chunking theory and mental imagery that allow a single brain to track 1,440 squares and dozens of tactical lines, turning what looks like magic into a learnable skill-set for serious players.

Beyond the dazzling historical narrative, the book functions as a practical manual. Over-the-board diagrams, self-tests and progressive exercises teach readers how to visualize coordinates, retain complete positions and calculate variations purely in the mind. Comparative studies show that the same mnemonic devices boost regular tournament performance, while chapters on neuroscience reveal why blindfold training strengthens pattern recognition far faster than traditional sighted practice. For coaches and club competitors, the annotated “important games” section doubles as a reference resource, offering 120 classic encounters graded by complexity and keyed to the instructional themes in each chapter.

Collectors value the 2013 McFarland paperback for its encyclopedic scope: biographies of every recorded blindfold specialist, tabular records of simultaneous displays, and a 38-page bibliography that makes it the standard scholarly source. This clean, unmarked copy is ideally suited for resale, library supplementation or personal improvement—no signatures, inscriptions or ex-libris stamps, just crisp pages and a tight spine ready for hundreds of hours of absorbing study.

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