I don't know if this is relevant to anyone, and suspect like 2 or 3 people at most will read this, but I figure I'd post it here regardless. I've recently been working on my visualization ability and testing my limits in this regard. It's kind of essential to have this ability if you want to be able to study chess effectively from books. In longer classical games I can, for the most part, now remember and play through games mentally provided there's nothing too crazy going on in a middle game. In shorter time controls, I'm completely helpless.
I've only ever been able to see a small section of the board at any given time. I can actively mentally picture only around a quarter of the board pretty much perfectly regardless of the situation. Any more than that and things start getting more fuzzy. If I "look" at other parts of the board I can "see" them. I know what pieces are where and that they exist, but I can't keep them in my mental stack easily when visualizing. I believe I tend to use the pawn structure as a sort of landscape and remember pieces in relation to it. I believe this works well because I've typically seen pawn structures many, many times allowing me to chunk them more easily in addition to the fact that they don't tend to rapidly change, unlike nearly every other piece.
However, as you might imagine, this makes it difficult when I get down to things like king and pawn races. Since they're on different parts of the board. and since there's not much pawn structure left for reference as a landscape, I can struggle to keep track of my calculations in these. Additionally, the board in my mind starts to warp, in almost non-Euclidean ways, if I try to instead visualize the checkerboard pattern as my reference. Diagonals might curve. A rank might be the 5th on one edge of the board, and the 4th if I try to follow it over. Squares stop being the same size. Etc. One trick I've found that seems to help me greatly in these positions with large empty spaces is to create an artificial landscape over the board in the form of a lattice. For me, I find it helps to visualize the squares along the 2nd and 7th ranks and the b and g files and to remember pieces and pawns in relationship to this rather than an actual "chessboard" pattern. I mentally highlight the squares along these two ranks and two files as a purplish pink personally, and remember where the pieces stand in relation to this framework. It's slow, and far from perfect, as I have to mentally check where the pieces all lie in relation to this framework, as if setting them up on a parallel board, but it seems to greatly reduce any warping of the chessboard that occurs if I try to visualize it normally for whatever reason. I've been toying with the idea of trying to do this for all positions from the get go, but it's really only needed for the late endgames, as the piece locations don't shift for me, only the structure of the chessboard itself really tends to warp badly. It does make it easier to trace pieces across the chessboard however, which can be difficult since I can really only visualize about a quarter of the board normally. Additionally, it would likely stop me having to mentally check where pieces lie in relation to this different board structure as I'd already know. If anyone else has these "chessboard warping" issues, I'd recommend trying to visualize things with this set of highlighted squares, and remembering where your pieces lay in relation to this structure for a little bit to see if it helps. It was pretty much instant for me, taking only a day or so before I could notice a difference.
Additionally, my father has aphantasia. I certainly don't have aphantasia, but if visualization ability is genetically influenced, at least in part, it might explain why I've always struggled in this regard with chess.
I'd also be interested in knowing how this affects the rate of blunders that are just careless oversights. e.g. missing seeing something is attacked, missing that a piece is hanging, etc. While certainly overrated, I at least would like to believe I'm decent at chess. Far from good, but decent. However, this is something I struggle with greatly. Every 2 or 3 blitz games of 3+2 I'll just miss that a piece or pawn is attacked or hanging. I've noticed though that this rate varies greatly even between players at similar skill levels. I'm in the more blunder heavy side I feel. Some players feel like they have little positional or tactical strength, but seem to almost never blunder. Likewise other players are much more peaky. I feel like this may be related to an inability to mentally keep the whole board continuously "present" in my mind rather than breaking it up and looking at individual pieces of it. I'd be interested in seeing if those are at all correlated, although it might be a little difficult to test in a non subjective manner.
If anyone has any suggestions for practice for better visualization or questions, let me know and I'll try to answer them.
I've only ever been able to see a small section of the board at any given time. I can actively mentally picture only around a quarter of the board pretty much perfectly regardless of the situation. Any more than that and things start getting more fuzzy. If I "look" at other parts of the board I can "see" them. I know what pieces are where and that they exist, but I can't keep them in my mental stack easily when visualizing. I believe I tend to use the pawn structure as a sort of landscape and remember pieces in relation to it. I believe this works well because I've typically seen pawn structures many, many times allowing me to chunk them more easily in addition to the fact that they don't tend to rapidly change, unlike nearly every other piece.
However, as you might imagine, this makes it difficult when I get down to things like king and pawn races. Since they're on different parts of the board. and since there's not much pawn structure left for reference as a landscape, I can struggle to keep track of my calculations in these. Additionally, the board in my mind starts to warp, in almost non-Euclidean ways, if I try to instead visualize the checkerboard pattern as my reference. Diagonals might curve. A rank might be the 5th on one edge of the board, and the 4th if I try to follow it over. Squares stop being the same size. Etc. One trick I've found that seems to help me greatly in these positions with large empty spaces is to create an artificial landscape over the board in the form of a lattice. For me, I find it helps to visualize the squares along the 2nd and 7th ranks and the b and g files and to remember pieces and pawns in relationship to this rather than an actual "chessboard" pattern. I mentally highlight the squares along these two ranks and two files as a purplish pink personally, and remember where the pieces stand in relation to this framework. It's slow, and far from perfect, as I have to mentally check where the pieces all lie in relation to this framework, as if setting them up on a parallel board, but it seems to greatly reduce any warping of the chessboard that occurs if I try to visualize it normally for whatever reason. I've been toying with the idea of trying to do this for all positions from the get go, but it's really only needed for the late endgames, as the piece locations don't shift for me, only the structure of the chessboard itself really tends to warp badly. It does make it easier to trace pieces across the chessboard however, which can be difficult since I can really only visualize about a quarter of the board normally. Additionally, it would likely stop me having to mentally check where pieces lie in relation to this different board structure as I'd already know. If anyone else has these "chessboard warping" issues, I'd recommend trying to visualize things with this set of highlighted squares, and remembering where your pieces lay in relation to this structure for a little bit to see if it helps. It was pretty much instant for me, taking only a day or so before I could notice a difference.
Additionally, my father has aphantasia. I certainly don't have aphantasia, but if visualization ability is genetically influenced, at least in part, it might explain why I've always struggled in this regard with chess.
I'd also be interested in knowing how this affects the rate of blunders that are just careless oversights. e.g. missing seeing something is attacked, missing that a piece is hanging, etc. While certainly overrated, I at least would like to believe I'm decent at chess. Far from good, but decent. However, this is something I struggle with greatly. Every 2 or 3 blitz games of 3+2 I'll just miss that a piece or pawn is attacked or hanging. I've noticed though that this rate varies greatly even between players at similar skill levels. I'm in the more blunder heavy side I feel. Some players feel like they have little positional or tactical strength, but seem to almost never blunder. Likewise other players are much more peaky. I feel like this may be related to an inability to mentally keep the whole board continuously "present" in my mind rather than breaking it up and looking at individual pieces of it. I'd be interested in seeing if those are at all correlated, although it might be a little difficult to test in a non subjective manner.
If anyone has any suggestions for practice for better visualization or questions, let me know and I'll try to answer them.
