What are ways of practicing blindfold chess?

Question

Is there a way to practice blindfold chess on the computer?

For example, are there any programs online which give only a transcript of the moves played, and allow you to type in your next move, rather than showing a board?

Answer 1

Not strictly on a computer in your sense I assume, and, depending on how good you are, potentially not challenging enough: A friend of mine did this with an old second hand chess computer. The kind that comes with a board and pieces. The board is touch sensitive to register your moves and has LEDs to indicate computer moves. He played without the pieces.

The advantage: Many of these take batteries and allow you to play anywhere.

Answer 2

One way to do this is to play at FICS. Using the Arena GUI - and probably others too, I'm sure (but this didn't work for me when I tried e.g. BabasChess just now) - you can login to FICS, and then enter "set style 9" in the console to set your style variable appropriately. Then just seek/play games as one normally would at FICS, and instead of the game being displayed on Arena's board, you will just be told your opponent's moves in the console, and enter your own there as well. One great thing about this is that you aren't limited to finding others who want to play blind as well, and you can switch between playing blind and playing normally as you wish by resetting the style variable.

Answer 3

You can do this with Chessmaster by checking Blindfold Play in the Rules Tab

Answer 4

GNU Chess

• https://www.gnu.org/software/chess/

GNU Chess works in a terminal. You enter your move, get the response. No board. Only the command line interface.

Answer 5

You can play blindfold chess against a strong computer online at http://www.apronus.com/chess/computer.htm - you need to tick the checkbox called "blindfold chess" and the board will become empty. The moves played will be displayed as text but the empty board is still used as the interface for making moves.

If the engine is too strong you can give it less time to think to make it weaker.

You can untick the box at any time to see the position. You can take moves back. Additionally, by clicking on a button "Chess Editor in New Window" you can transfer your game to a chess editor which allows you to export it as FEN or PGN or to make a permanent link as a bookmark or to share with other people. You can also make an animated diagram with the whole game.

Moreover, you can practice your blindfold chess starting from any set up position. For example, you may start with just the bishop and knight against a lonely king

Answer 6

you can play blindfold on chess.com. That is a good way to practice if you are like me and dislike playing against computers.

Answer 7

With Tarrasch GUI you can practice blindfold, you can setup any position and play from there. I'd suggest starting with K & Q Vs K, try to mate blindfold, then K & R Vs K. Sadly its only available for windows, I haven't found a good linux equivalent yet.