Blitz Book Review: Blindfold Opening Visualization by Martin Justesen
A quick look at a brief book of 100 blindfold chess puzzles from the opening.
Martin B. Justesen (you may better know him as the author of
) is a rare breed of amateur chess player who also writes chess books. One such book of his that I really enjoyed is Blindfold Opening Visualization. It’s as straightforward as it comes: 100 chess puzzles in the opening (within the first 10 moves) from the Lichess puzzle database, selected based on how often the positions occurred in real life games.There are many resources for blindfold training, but I think that little booklets like this are underrated, and the selection is rather good. The book doesn’t teach you technique — it’s more about how to train the technique you already have.
Maybe you can visualize the following Grandmaster game that recently occurred:
White: GM Hans Moke Niemann
Black: GM Vladimir Kramnik
1.e4 f6 2.d4 g5
White to play and win.
Need a hint? Here’s the whole position:
Were you able to find 0-1 White loses by resignation? That’s what Hans played, good job! But the actual solution is 3.Qh5# and you’ve just mated a grumpy former World Chess Champion.
I digress.
The way blindfold opening puzzles work is that you’re given just the notation leading to the position you must solve. You must visualize the moves and resulting positions in your mind, and then find the correct move from there. Many are tactics you must execute; some are tactics or traps you must avoid. The book divides the problems into three sections based on difficulty, progressively getting more difficult the further you move in. (I am unsure how difficulty was determined, however).
Martin is kind enough to provide another page after each problem showing you the position you’re trying to solve, so if you have trouble visualizing, or if you want to test how accurately you visualized the board, this is a nice plus. Then after the depicted position, the solution is given on the following page, sometimes with a very short explanation. Overall, it’s a nice collection of positions and you’re likely to find tactics that could help your game practically, even without the benefits of blindfold training.
The next question is, of course: Why blindfold training? The book suggests:
It helps train your visualization skills. After calculating a particular position, you have to evaluate the resulting position, which requires at least some ability to visualize the board in that hypothetical future state. Blindfold training might help increase this skill.
It helps train your calculation skills. This is related to the above visualization skill; but especially because your access to pattern recognition is reduced by not being able to see the board, you may need to calculate harder than you’re used to doing.
I will add: It’s a cool party trick.
Blindfold training is a common (though not universal) recommendation for players wishing to improve many aspects of their chess game, and the extreme concentration on the game when you cannot afford not to think about it can help you play better with your eyes open as well.
My verdict: grab this if you think you’re ready to start doing some blindfold training, and I’m sure it will serve you well.
You can buy it online at Amazon, or you can get it (and other books Martin’s produced) by subscribing to his Substack.