I overheard an interesting discussion this morning between DH and DS who both play blindfold chess. DH plays with full visualisation of an imaginary board (when probed by DS, he says he usually imagines it at an angle from a seated position at a table, but he can easily rotate the image for an aerial view). DS plays solely with the information as data in pgn format, since DH has frequently chatted to DS, for years, about games and chess problems when no boards were handy. I was surprised that father and son played so differently.
DH has suggested that DS should try visualisation of the board. DS is already quite strong at visuospatial tasks having been a speedcuber and trained for the mathematics Olympiads. I wonder if he will take up DH’s suggestion and whether it will have any benefit for him, at chess and in his chosen field of engineering.
