Blindfold Opening Visualization: 100 Chess Puzzles

This is the second book in the series 'Blindfold Chess Visualization’'. The first book, 'Blindfold Endgame Visualization' is available on Amazon as well.

Blindfold chess training exercises with a focus on opening positions

This book will train and test your visualization skills through 100 well-selected positions. You will get a series of moves from common openings. The depth of the lines is from 4 to 10 moves.

You will not always have to find a killer tactic, but in some puzzles, you will just have to avoid a tactic and find a good move. You can use the look inside function and try the first puzzles.

Why This Book?
I have always been impressed by strong chess players' abilities to visualize the board without seeing it, firing off variations in the post mortem, or walking away from the board during a game while thinking about the position. As an adult trying to learn the game and improve I really want to be able to improve my ability to visualize. However, I soon discovered that there wasn't much training material available. To change this I have gone through hundreds of opening positions from real game positions to select the best positions for blindfold solving. You might ask yourself why should I spend time trying to visualize a position and calculate when I have the board to look at during the game.

Boris Gelfand said it pretty clearly in an interview on the Perpetual Podcast: “to save energy”. By straining your brain muscles now, you will be able to outlast your next opponent. I hope that the book will challenge you to stretch and strain your mind in the effort to solve these positions. Don’t be scared of failing as long as you put in the effort. You can also see it as a meditative exercise disconnecting from the outside world. Set aside a minimum amount of time you want to spend on each position. I will suggest 15 minutes. If you haven't solved it by then try to solve it by setting up a board and moving a couple of moves into the puzzle.

What do the experts say?