In this video, IM Alex Astaneh will introduce a new series that will help you to improve your chess

visualization skills. First of all, what is visualization in chess? Visualization is the ability to picture
a position in your mind, to hold that position in memory and to imagine how the pieces can move
without actually moving them over the board. One of the biggest mistakes that we see, aspiring
chess players make, is that they don’t practice their visualization skills anywhere near enough. In
order to improve your chess visualization, you should practice holding the position in your mind
and developing your chess imagination. In this video, IM Alex Astaneh will show you one
technique in which you can do this. In this series, eventually we will show you a variety of
different techniques to constantly work on your chess visualization. The technique shown in this
video is a very simple one. It involves playing over master level games, in this case a game
played by former world champion Anatoli Karpov, and what it involves, IM Alex Astaneh will read
out the first three moves from either side but rather than playing out the moves, one by one, he
will instead only play out the moves in the position after three moves have been played by each
side. The challenge of this exercise is that you must try and imagine the position, follow along
with your mind’s eye and only afterwards will he show the position. The beauty of this exercise is
that you can progressively increase it. In this video, we start with three moves for each side. In
future videos, we will show four moves for each side. You can then improve that to five moves
each side, six moves each side and so on. The world’s best chess players, like world champion
Magnus Carlsen, are famous for being able to give simultaneous exhibitions where they play
against ten, twenty or even more opponents at the same time wearing a blindfold around their
head. That means that their visualization skills are so highly developed that they are able to hold
all of these different positions in memory from the very beginning of a game to the end, all of
them at the same time. Blindfold chess was considered miraculous for centuries, but now there is
greater recognition of people who can keep track of more than one simultaneous blindfolded
game. Grandmasters weren’t born knowing how to do that. It takes a lot of practice and patience,
but after some time it will pay off.

In order to improve your chess visualization, you should practice holding the position in your
mind and developing your chess imagination. In this video, IM Alex Astaneh will show you one
technique in which you can do this. In this series, eventually we will show you a variety of
different techniques to constantly work on your chess visualization. The technique shown in this
video is a very simple one. It involves playing over master level games, in this case a game
played between Aaron Nimzowitsch and Simon Sinowjewitsch Alapin. IM Alex Astaneh will read
out the first four moves from either side but rather than playing out the moves, one by one, he will
instead only play out the moves in the position after four moves have been played by each side.
The challenge of this exercise is that you must try and imagine the position, follow along with
your mind’s eye and only afterwards will he show the position. The beauty of this exercise is that
you can progressively increase it. The world’s best chess players, like world champion Magnus
Carlsen, are famous for being able to give simultaneous exhibitions where they play against ten,
twenty or even more opponents at the same time wearing a blindfold around their head. That
means that their visualization skills are so highly developed that they are able to hold all of these
different positions in memory from the very beginning of a game to the end, all of them at the
same time. Blindfold chess was considered miraculous for centuries, but now there is greater
recognition of people who can keep track of more than one simultaneous blindfolded game.
Grandmasters weren’t born knowing how to do that. It takes a lot of practice and patience, but
after some time it will pay off.