👨‍🏫 The Struggle Is the Point, Why Blindfold Part Four (Insight)

Welcome to the Conceptualizing Chess Podcast from Don't Move Until You See It.

On Tuesdays, we deep dive on a key insight to improve our conceptualization skills and

make us masters of the mental board.

For more information on Don't Move Until You See It and to get the free 5-day Conceptualizing

Chess series, go to Don't Move Until You See.it or check the show notes.

The following is part 4 of the Wire Blindfold series here on the Insight episodes.

This one won't make a huge amount of sense without the other 3, so recommend going back

and finding part 1, seeing the Matrix Code and then doing the Tuesday Insight episodes

from there to get caught up.

I keep guitars where the next a little bit bent and it's a little bit out of tune and

I want to work and battle it and conquer it and make it express whatever attitude I have

at that moment.

I want it to be a struggle.

Jack White, it might get loud, 2008.

Hi, it's Aidan.

I'm going to guide you through the first several moves of a blindfold game.

Play along as far as you can.

If you hit your limit before we're done, no stress.

The struggle is the point.

1.

E4.

E5.

You know this position.

You've seen it plenty of times.

If you're new to blindfold work, the exact details may be a little fuzzy.

You might have to work out that the light squared bishop can see A6 or the queens eyeing

off H5.

But holding this position is not tricky.

Long-term memory is doing most of the work.

2.

Knight F3.

Knight C6.

This is where I fell over on my first attempt at blindfold work.

The knights came out and I couldn't work out how they interacted with the pawns.

I was an E4 player at the time.

I shouldn't have had to work it out.

But I'd never had to actually think about it.

My eyes always told me in the moment what the knights were doing.

The knowledge wasn't integrated.

The result in games was that I'd often move my knight and blunder a central pawn.

My eyes couldn't save me all the time.

The issues we find when we're blindfolded.

Our reflection of the issues we have when we can see.

3.

Bishop C4.

Bishop C5.

What are the bishops doing now?

Well, the bishop on C4 hits F7.

Many of us know that immediately.

Our early experiences getting crushed by the scholars made burn that detail into our psyche.

So did you notice that Bishop C4 left the G2 pawn undefended?

Or Bishop C5 left G7 undefended?

The vacated square.

So easy to miss in blindfolds and in our actual games.

4.

C3.

Queen E7.

Once C3 hits many of us so on our own.

If you don't play the Italian, C3 seems strange.

It doesn't develop anything.

It blocks the natural development square for the knight.

The tiniest bit of fog descends.

The temptation is to simply think that's weird and move on.

That impulse makes sense.

If your working memory is approaching capacity, your brain wants to think about each new move

as little as possible.

But then Queen E7 is strange as well.

Two weird moves back to back.

The fog's getting thicker.

A move ago perhaps you felt clarity, but now you're uncomfortable.

We can take that uncomfortable feeling for what it really is.

Error feedback.

Your brain knows when it's clear about a position and it knows when it's foggy and unsure.

The latter is an indicator that you've missed something or not tied something into the

wider position or simply maxed out what your conceptualization is capable of right now.

That's OK too.

Error feedback is a core pillar of effective learning.

The faster we notice an error, correct it and try again.

The faster our knowledge or skill grows.

Blindfold training is a constant error feedback loop.

You try, you get foggy, you restart.

On the second go through, you notice more.

You tie things together more and get just a little bit further before the fog descends

again.

So let's restart.

One, E4, E5, two, night F3, night C6, three, bishop C4, bishop C5.

Then you run through the ways these moves affect the position.

We need repetition for details to stick for them to be automatic.

The second go around, your brain's doing a better job of chunking the information together.

You reach the tricky fourth move, feeling a bit more confident.

Four, C3, queen E7.

This time you don't skip over C3.

You take the time to tie it into the position.

You notice it stops blacks night from jumping forward to B4.

You notice it blocks the diagonal to white's king.

That it supports a possible D4 push.

That opens a diagonal through the now empty C2 square for white's queen.

You do the same for queen E7.

You notice it defends the E5 pawn and the bishop on C5.

You notice it leaves the C pawn without a defender.

The position feels clearer now, easier to juggle, hold and explore.

As a side bit, that's all the moves we're going to do now, you can let go of the position.

The struggle to get from unclear to clear is the bit that matters.

It trains your brain what to do with this information, how to chunk it, tie it together,

juggle it more efficiently.

And it trains you to notice and appreciate all the things each move does.

These benefits tend to stick, because blindfold work demands the exact conditions that foster

effective learning.

Researcher Stanislaus Dahane posits that there are four pillars of effective learning.

The first pillar is attention.

We need full attention and focus on the task at hand, no distractions.

Well, good luck doing a blindfold exercise if you're distracted.

The second pillar is active engagement.

We must create and test hypotheses, come up with ideas, try to work things out.

Passive learning doesn't work very well.

With each move, you're tying the position together, looking for details, exploring what

could happen in the position.

Because if you don't do that, you get foggy.

That's active engagement.

The third is error feedback, which we've already discussed.

And the last is consolidation.

This is the repetitions going back through the exercise when we've lost the position.

The consolidation pillar is also about having good sleep, which admittedly blindfold training

does not force.

Nothing's perfect, I guess.

Blindfold training hits all four pillars because it's so difficult.

The difficulty is desirable.

As long as it doesn't go too far.

If your attempts at blindfold feel impossible, rather than very hard, that's a sign you

need to change something.

Researchers Elizabeth and Robert Bjork, who we discussed in part three, wrote, quote,

desirable difficulties are desirable because they trigger encoding and retrieval processes

that support learning, comprehension and remembering.

If, however, the learner does not have the background knowledge or skills to respond

to them successfully, they become undesirable difficulties.

End quote.

When it's too difficult, it stops working.

If blindfold work feels impossible, you can add an aid or two to bring the difficulty

down.

Here are some ideas.

You can look at a blank board as you go.

Write down the moves or key piece locations.

Take notes on the main ideas or dynamics in the position.

Maybe set up a selection of pieces on the board, the pawn structure or the king side or

just the black pieces.

Literally, just follow along on a board to start.

It's not perfect training to use these aids, sure.

But perfect training is pointless if it's simply too difficult to get started.

Training you can do beats perfect training any day of the week.

As long as you still feel the struggle, you're still getting quality training.

Over time, as you build strength and confidence, you won't need the aids so much.

However, you go about your blindfold training, let the struggle be your guide.

That's your signal.

There's an improvement opportunity here.

Don't shy away from it.

You want to work, battle it, conquer it.

Because it's exactly the struggle for clarity that makes blindfold as effective as it is.

Here's to the journey.

Thank you for listening to the Tuesday Insight.

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For more information on building your own conceptualization skills, visit don't move until you see dot it.

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Here's to the journey.