Chess blindness

Chess blindness referred to chess being overlooked an obvious, immediate threat of the enemy. This can, for example, a ground threat or loss figure to be leading mostly to the immediate loss, unless both players are blind chess. There are also cases in which a game is abandoned, although the situation is far from hopeless. Favors the occurrence of chess blindness by time constraints.

If trains are inadvertently interchanged in the order, we speak colloquially of a finger error.

With the cognitive- psychological causes of blindness chess deals chess psychology.

The doctor and chess grandmaster Siegbert Tarrasch called the chess blindness in his work The modern game of chess scachistica as amaurosis. While Jacques Lousy she attributes to fatigue of the brain suspected Tarrasch great excitement as the cause, the result is that due to excessive concentration obvious selling points are no longer perceived.

Chess blindness comes with players before every skill level, only chess programs, however, are immune because they make no obvious tactical error as part of their calculation horizon. However, with good human players extreme cases of chess blindness are also rare.

Chess blindness should not be confused with the Blind Chess or the blindfold chess.

Example 1

This clearly better for him position the later world chess champion Tigran Petrosian played in his game against David Bronstein (Amsterdam 1956), the chess blind train 36 Ne4 - g5, whereupon Black easy with 36 ... Sf5xd6 could beat the white lady. Petrosian gave up immediately.

Example 2

An example of mutual chess blindness is the match between László Szabó and Samuel Reshevsky from the Candidates tournament in 1953. Black is in check, forcing is 20 ... Kg8 - h8. However, Reshevsky played 20 ... Lg7xf6 what a trivial two spacious Matt after 21 Dc2xg6 ( f7 the farmer is tied up by the rotor d5) permits. Szabó pulled inexplicably 21 Lb2xf6 and the game ended in a draw 27 train.

Example 3

In this match between world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik and the chess program Deep Fritz ( Bonn 2006 ) Kramnik surprisingly overlooked a single-train Matt and got a balanced position despite still sufficient existing cooling-off period after 34 ... De3? 35 DH7 #.

Kramnik had by his own admission the position after 34 ... De3 in the belief that he would win now, some trains already sought before. Because of the white basic series weakness of the exchange of queens seems inevitable, since it would otherwise pass for black in two ways with Matt threat (on 35th Dxb4 follows Ld2 36 Dh4 Bb4 with attack on the Springer and Matt threat on c1; ! On 35th Dh4 follows De2 with the threat Df1 # Springer or profit). After the exchange of queens a distant passed pawn on the queenside should win (after a4 -a3 ), as the Springer is too far away to f8.

Instead of the loss train 34 ... De3 Kramnik should have been satisfied with 34 ... Kg8 after 35 Sg6 Lxb2 36 Qd5 Kh7 37 Sf8 Kh8 38 Sg6 etc. with perpetual check and a draw.