The history of blindfold chess goes back at least to the eighth century. Blindfold chess is played without seeing the board and men, although the players are not necessarily bolndfolded.
Some years ago Sam Teitlebaum, then president of the long-defunct Salt Lake Chess Club, sponsored Samuel Reshevsky in a blindfold match. Sam received permission from Reshevsky to put a blindfold on Reshevsky, who laughed and said, "This is the first time ever that I have really played blindfold chess."The stronger player is not allowed to see the board. He plays by visualizing the initial position and modifying this image after every move.
This is testing enough, but even more exciting is a "simultaneous blindfold chess" display, where the player giving the display competes against several others who are allowed to look at their boards.
If a simultaneous display consists of 20 games, the "blindfolded" player must accurately remember the course of 20 different games, retaining the image of each distinct position in his memory until called upon to play a move in the corresponding game.
In these displays the blindfolded players sit out of sight of the boards. The player then replies with his move that is then made on the board by the referee. This routine is repeated at each board until every game is complete.
Because blindfold chess does not permit the player a board or pieces, it can be played anywhere, on horseback, for example, as long as the players can report their moves to each other.
Quick play chess probably began not long after the chess clock was introduced in 1883. Joop van Oosterom, a Dutch entrepreneur, brought the two together recently in his Melody Amber Tournament in Monaco and from March 26 to April 7.
The adventurous sponsor assembled almost all the world's top players in this event in which each contested one game against the other 11 at the quick tempo of 25 minutes for each player for all moves. Each also contested a second game against the others at the same tempo but this time neither player was allowed chess pieces.
They briefly communicated their moves by mouse on the empty screen of a computer chessboard. The clock invented by Bobby Fischer was used to time both types of games. For the quick game, it gave the players 10 additional seconds each time they moved. For the blindfold quick game, it gave the players 20 extra seconds each time they moved.
The outcome was a triumph for the 24-year-old Viswanathan Anand (India), who scored 9-2 in the quick games and 8-3 for the blindfold quick games, for a total of 17-5.
The final standings were: Anand, 17; Kramnick, 16; Ivanchuk, 141/2; Kamsky, 14; Judit Polgar, 11; Karpov, 101/2; Ljubojevic, 10; Nunn, 91/2; Seirawan, 91/2; Zsu Polgar, 71/2; Piket, 61/2; Korchnoi, 6.
The highest quality of the play, it was reported, was in Anand's defeat of Judit Polgar in their blindfold quick game in Round 1.
- CHALLENGING - In the New York Times of May 4 was a photograph of Jonathan Alejandro playing a simultaneous match with the second graders of Public School 70 in the South Bronx. "The message is clearly drawn," the cutline says. "It is special attitudes, not special programs, that bring success. The results were acknowledged by the U.S. Department of Education citation that marked it as one of the New York City schools raising levels among disadvantaged students. Jonathan Alejandro works second graders in learning the intricacies of chess."
- TEMPO - This is the Italian word for "time." It means in chess a gain of time in that a player who has gained or lost tempi, perhaps in the opening, has achieved his objective more quickly or slowly than his opponent.
Tempo is one of the three basic elements in which each player attempts to gain an advantage; the others are force and space. The maxim that each piece should be moved only once in the opening was formulated to avoid a waste of tempi.
It is sometimes stated that a gain of a pawn is worth the loss of three tempi, but this clearly depends on the situation. In certain cases occurring in the end game, it might be desirable to lose a tempo. Examples of such situations are when "zugzwang" exists or when the opposition cannot be maintained. A common maneuver to lose a tempo is triangulation of the king.