History, Psychology, Techniques, Champions, World Records and
Important Games
Eliot Hearst and John Knott
McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, library binding
The first comprehensive study of the phenomena of chess played
without sight of the board, captured in a new book that has been 30
years in the making. This fascinating treatise describes the
personalities and achievements of blindfold chess's greatest players,
including Philidor, Paulsen, Morphy, Blackburne, Zukertort,
Pillsbury, Reti, Alekhine, Koltanowski, Najdorf, and Fine, as well as
present-day grandmasters such as Anand and Kramnik. 444 games are
included, some never before published, peppered with diagrams and
annotations. The book provides suggestions to facilitate the
technique of playing blindfolded, as well as documentation of the
concrete benefits of learning to play without sight of the board to
improve your OTB chess. A section of the book contains a readable
summary of psychological research on general chess skill (as well as
the blindfold variant), where topics such as memory techniques,
imagery and visualization, expertise, etc., are discussed. Supposed
health hazards of blindfold play are also assessed.
Eliot Hearst is a former captain of the U.S. Olympic team, one of the
very few Life Senior Masters in Arizona, and one of the few Americans
to win a game from Bobby Fischer after he became a strong master; see
Fischer-Hearst at chessgames.com's excellent site:
http://www.chessgames.com/
After many years teaching and doing research at various universities
(e.g., Columbia, Berkeley, and Indiana), Eliot is now an adjunct
professor of psychology at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
You can order the book, due to be published around December 1 of this
year, by going to www.blindfoldchess.net and clicking on either of
the two major suppliers, McFarland Publishers and Amazon Books. Or
you can phone in an order to McFarland by dialing 1-800-253-2187.
As a bonus, Eliot will sign your copy, with whatever personal note
you'd like (within reason!), sometime in January 2009 (location to be
announced), as well as at a signing session at the Tucson Open,
January 23-25.
No comments:
Post a Comment