Hi Lucas,
I started playing with a tactile board in 2007 (I was playing as a sighted
player before).
I am touching the board a lot. For me it is the only way to avoid blunders.
Hope this helps.
Olivier
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lucas Radaelli" <lucasradaelli@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "US BCA" <usbca_chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2015 8:28 PM
Subject: [usbca_chess] chess visualization vs touching the board
I started playing chess again two weeks ago and haven't won any game yet.
computer, people and even a friend of mine that played only in his
childhood were able to defeat me. analyzing my games afterwards, it is
kinda clear the points of mistake -- I would move a piece leaving other
unprotected, thus losing a important piece in early game. Basically losing
a lot of material without gaining anything back. This was not because my opponent used an amazing tactics, it is simply because I could not
visualize at the moment of my move that I would be doing such a stupid
thing.
I feel that touching the board takes too long. I am able, at a given
moment, to describe the position of all the pieces in the board from
memory, but I can not create relations between them in my memory. It is a
list of positions, but it lacks the feature to tell me what is being
attacked, what is being protected and so on. I fell that for verticals is
much easier to visualize in my mind, but when it comes to diagonals for me it is very hard.
I am not saying that I don't touch the board. I do, but even then I fell that it is easier to just think on the board, the pieces and try to
understand how they relate to each other to actually touch the board. It takes a lot of time, as I said.
So, I am writing this e-mail to understand if other blind players
experienced that in the beginning as well, when they started playing. Is there any advice or some sort of exercise that you would suggest me to do
to improve on that area? I felt that my sighted friends, with a glance,
can understand the board very quickly and plan their moves. With a lot of
pieces, I just could spend a lot of time trying to understand the possible
threats and not planning actually what to do.
Not sure if this was clear enough, but would love to hear your
experiences. It's been a bit frustrating this start. I have been enjoying
solving puzzles much more than the actual play, hope to change that soon.
