“The process of setting a goal on the outer boundaries of what we think is possible, and then systematically pursuing it, is one of the most fulfilling parts about being human.”
-Stulberg & Magness: “Peak Performance” (Rodale 2017)
“The process of setting a goal on the outer boundaries of what we think is possible, and then systematically pursuing it, is one of the most fulfilling parts of being human.”
-Stulbert & Magness: Peak Performance (Rodale 2017)
Welcome back to Invisible Chess. There is a new set of exercises - and some thoughts on otherwise we can flex our 'colour of squares' muscles - further down. First, though, let me address something important.
This is the third week of our series and that's an interesting and potentially tricky time for any new programme. The initial enthusiasm of the honeymoon stage is coming to an end. Now the challenge switches from "How to Begin Something New?" to "How Do I KeepThis New Behaviour As A Regular Thing?" It's a non-trivial question, but one that often gets overlooked.
One of the key factors behind whether we stick with something is simply do we believe we can do it or not? I was pleased to see that in Week One's poll whilst only a third of people who answered believed for sure that they were good enough to try blindfold chess training, over half thought they might give it a go. At the time of writing Week Two 's poll over half of people who voted had actually done some training.
With respect to self-belief, I wonder if things have changed over the last fortnight. Let’s see
For those of you who are feeling chipper about all this - great. Keep it up.
For those of you who are less sure - don't worry, just keep going. You can act your way into believing. Just keep at it.
THE SCHEDULE
Have you wondered why I haven't written out a formal schedule for you to follow? I was originally planning it along those lines.
On MONDAY do this, ON TUESDAY do that, On WEDNESDAY ... and so on.
Whilst prescriptive training schedules like this have a superficial appeal, the reality is that our daily lives are so different it really doesn't make sense for me to be telling you when you should be doing things. Yes, the course is designed so that you can pop in and out of it, anytime and anywhere, but you still need the headspace to be able to focus.
So really it's up to you to decide when to take your rest days and when and for how long during your working days, you're going to try the visualisation work.
To tick off a day in your note book as "I showed up" all you have to do is answer one single "what colour is the square?" question. Not a whole exercise/opening that I give. Just one single square.nings.
WEEK THREE EXERCISES
Colour of Squares - Other Training Methods
I have some more Diagonals exercises for you today. First, though, a few more thoughts, on some alternative 'colour of squares' exercises that you might like to try.
It's worth having a range of practice methods in your arsenal to keep things fresh. I'm not going to mention 'colour of squares' exercises again explicitly in this course, but until you get to the stage that you can automatically name the colour of any given square without having to think about it, I definitely recommend doing a little bit of this kind of work each day. Even if just a minute or so.
FLASH CARDS
Rene told me that she has flash cards with all the squares on the front and the colour on the back. Any time she wants to practice she can shuffle them up and test herself or get her wife to read out the cards to her.
No doubt Flash Card King Neal Bruce would approve of this method. Although I've never tried it myself, it strikes me as a great way of getting some randomisation into a Colour of Squares practice regime, whilst avoiding the need to use the internet/a phone but staying fully portable and easily accessible.
Martin mentioned this free site in his '30 Days of Blindfold Chess Challenge' podcast episode back in June.
There are many resources here, one of them being a 'colour of squares' trainer. It's pretty simple. They flash up a square coordinate, you have to click on the box that says White or Black. You get ten questions and it's timed. At the end they add on penalty time depending on how many answers you got wrong.
The webpage has a very basic look and feel to it, but actually I really quite like that. And I like the way you can try the exercise a couple of times, do some blindfold training and then go back and test your time again to see if you're improving.
The only reason why I don't use this site more than I do is because I prefer to use resources that doesn't require any screen time where possible. If that's not a concern for you, you should definitely check out NOIR CHESS.
BILL FOSTER'S FULL-BOARD TOUR
Bill has mentioned his training method a few times on twitter and was kind enough to explain it to me in depth for me to share with you.
It's more complicated than other methods at first, but my experience was that it didn't take long to get the hang of it at all.
1. Imagine the start position, pieces only, no pawns. "Move" both bishops to their respective corners, displacing the rooks. Add knights to the empty bishop's starting squares.
So we should have Ba1, Nb2, Nc1, Qd1, Ke1, Nf1, Ng1, Bh1 as our basic starting position.
Consciously bringing to mind the colour of each square as you go ...
2. Start in one corner. Move the bishop to its centre square (e.g. Bh1-g2-f3-e4).
3. Repeat for the bishop in the other corner (e.g. Ba1-b2-c3-d4)
4. Move either king or queen forward and to the side along its diagonal (e.g. Ke1-f2-g3-h4)
5. Repeat for whichever piece you didn't move in step 4 (e.g. Qd1-c2-b3-a4)
6. Move one of the 'bishop's knights' on a four-square mini-tour to the side of the board (Nf1-e3-g4-h2)
7. Move the knight's knights on it's own four-square mini-tour - (Ng1-e2-f4-h3)
8. Repeat for the other side of the board.
Have you noticed that every square on the white side of the board has been visited precisely once?
10. Repeat for the Black side of the board
Bill told me, "I always start with the h1 corner, then a1, then a8, then h8."
Interestingly he also says that when he (rarely) starts a8/h8/h1/a1 he is "significantly less fluent". Which is a good argument for varying your practice routines - although as Bill created this exercise for himself as an alternative to counting sheep when trying to get to sleep that wasn't really the priority for him.
Bill also told me that before long he didn't need to consciously bring to mind what the colour of each square was. He just knew it as he was going along.
Pinball Bishops
The concept here is quite simple. You start with a bishop on the edge of the board. You then have to bounce off all the other edges to comeback to the side that you started at.
The 'solution' here is the squares that you hit along the way.
E.g for
Be1, CLOCKWISE
the solution would be
Ba5 - Bd8 - Bh4 - Be1
1. Bf1 - ANTI-CLOCKWISE
2. Bh6 - CLOCKWISE
3. Ba4 - ANTI-CLOCKWISE
4. Bb8 - CLOCKWISE
And one last one that is a little different. Here you start in the middle of the board.
5. Bf5 - ANTI CLOCKWISE
NEXT WEEK
In week 4 we'll be back working with knights. I'll also be having a think about how having a flexible work schedule as this course does can be a bit of a curse as well as a blessing.