In Part Four, we started to identify your natural cognitive style and what sort of Visualizer or Verbalizer you are. Today, we use that information and apply it to your mental Chessboard.
And we get some cameo insights from great masters of the past in here too.
There's a bit to get through, so let's jump in!
If you believe yourself to be a Visualizer, start at Step Four. If you're a Verbalizer, skip to Step Five. If you're somewhere in the middle, I recommend trying everything.
(If you're confused, you'll find Steps 1-3 in Part Four!)
Step Four: Visualizer Techniques
In Part One of this series, I mentioned the letter from Val Zemitis to GM Andrew Soltis. In that letter, he included a set of instructions that the hyper-visual Fritz Samisch had once given him to build that hyper-visual strength. I've a paraphrased version of his steps below.
For each of these steps, Object Visualizers may find it easier to build a photo-realistic representation in their minds, and Spatial Visualizers may find it easier to focus on the patterns of the board, the pieces, and the sightlines as you go. Spatial Visualizers may also prefer not to try and hold the whole board in their head at once, and instead take it in sections.
Experiment. Do what feels right for you.
These were Samisch's recommendations (paraphrased) for strongly visual conceptualizers:
- Stare at an empty chessboard for five or more minutes and then close your eyes. Try to see the board, the colors of the squares. Notice the diagonals and how they move across the board. Don't move on until you feel clear.
- When you feel confident, place one White pawn on the board mentally. See the pawn on the square and notice the force it exerts on the board. When you feel totally clear, add another pawn until all 8 are on. Then move on to pieces and do the same thing.
- After all the white pieces are on your mental board, move a pawn two spaces forward. See the change in your mind in detail. Notice the diagonals it opens up, perhaps the other pieces that are either freed or blocked by the move. Experiment doing this for a while.
- Then place the black pieces in the same manner.
Do this every day. If you've worked on clarity with each step, your mental board and the starting position will become very clear to you. This is a great baseline.
Samisch also wrote that you only need to learn to visualize from White's side. I don't agree with that myself, but in the interests of completeness I wanted to mention it.
(Special thanks to John Knott and Eliot Hearst for their book, Blindfold Chess: History, Psychology, Techniques, Champions, World Records and Important Games, where they relayed the contents of Zemitis' letter and this exercise. The book is hard to find, but I highly recommend it for anyone interested in this stuff.)
You can skip to Step Six now.
Step Five: Verbalizer Techniques
As a Verbalizer, you may find it useful to build habits that allow you to translate what you see happening on the Chessboard to words in your head, and to use words – instead of pictures – to keep track of what's happening.
Depending on your level of visual vividness (from Step 3) you may or may not naturally use images to augment your verbal thinking.
Either way, you'll find my article, "Chess Visualization and Aphantasia: A Guide" to be useful.
While it's aimed at people with no mental visuals at all, the tools, insights, and exercises will all help to build clarity without relying on any visual component, and to let your Verbalizer mind lead your conceptualization model.
Read that, then continue to Step Six.
Step Six: Reti's Dance
Richard Reti would often sing the praises of blindfold Chess training and the outsized results it creates in your regular Chess. He claimed he learned more from spending two-to-three months training his blindfold skills than he would have learned from playing/studying the regular way for years.
One part of his blindfold training routine is very useful for building comfort with our conceptualization model. I call it "Reti's Dance".
- Prepare your mental board in your head, whatever that means for you. It might be visual, it might be a set of patterns, maybe just an invisible sense of a board. Whatever it is to you, get it ready. Take some time and make it clear in your mind.
- Add two random pieces and two random squares. One White and one Black.
- Ask yourself, can these pieces attack each other? What is the minimum amount of moves required to allow one to attack the other? Move the pieces around on your mental board and try to find the answer. Explore.
- Set the original position up on a physical or digital board, and check if your answers were correct. (As you build confidence, you can skip this bit.)
- Then do it again with different pieces and different squares. As you get more comfortable, add more pieces of each color and see how you go.
When you're ready, you can move on to conceptualizing standard endgame positions, slowly increasing the number of pieces you're tracking at one time.
If you struggle to come up with random pieces and squares, you can generate random positions to use with this tool.
Step Seven: Test and Explore
The best these steps can do is point you in the right direction. You'll need to test, explore, and practice for any of it to stick. Here are some things you can do and tools you can use.
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Explore your opening theory in your mind. Ensuring you build a clear understanding of what's happening with every move. Let your mind do whatever it wants to do to enable that.
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When doing Chess puzzles, take some time to memorize the position, then rebuild the position on a different board without looking back at the puzzle. Experiment with different ways of memorizing the position. Is it easier for you to remember the position visually, or to tell yourself a verbal story about what's going on in the position and recall from there?
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Play out games in your head starting from a random move (like 1. c3). This ensures you're not simply replaying things you've memorized, but actually conceptualizing. Experiment with different ways of keeping track of the game. Notice what takes more effort to do and what takes less. What feels most comfortable?
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Complete isolated Chess conceptualization exercises like those in the Don't Move Training System or the Chess Visualization with Aiden Rayner podcast (Apple | Spotify).
I normally work one-on-one with my students to guide them through the full version of this process. When I do that, I can give curated guidance based on specific things we identify. Obviously, I can't do that in an article.
So these steps above may not exactly align for you. But take your time, explore, and try things. Use these steps and the insights from this series as a starting place, and experiment from there.
If you'd like to go further and organize some one-on-one coaching with me to find your conceptualization model (and to build your conceptualization skills in general), you can find out more about that here.
I hope this series has excited, informed, and energized you!
Above all else, I hope this helped you see just how incredible your brain is.
The more you learn about it, the more you align with its strengths, the better you can harness it.
And the more it'll impress you with what it can do.
Here's to the journey,
Aiden
