The importance of Chess Visualisation skills

@jaxu said in #4:
> The recent issue of US Chess had a letter to the editor about a player with aphantasia, the literal lack of visualization ability. I'm guessing no top level chess player had this

There is a Reddit post here about this ... strong players can have that and still do well in chess
www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/p3nizy/can_people_with_aphantasia_be_good_at_chess/

best answer from the reddit link contains this:

>www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010945221002628

>Taken together these data demonstrate that aphantasic individuals are not impaired on visual working memory tasks, suggesting visual imagery and working memory are not one and the same, with imagery (and sensory recruitment) being just one of the tools that can be used to solve visual working memory tasks.

The reddit has some interesting comments from individual possibly affected and still performing, but not just boasting, some seem to explain how they manage, or not. In any case, even if we can find some that do well, that does not say that it is not a barrier of potential. Although, it does indicate that what they call "visual working memory" is not completely bound to whatever the affliction is impeding, which it seems is summarized as having no imagery ability (sensory recruitment, visual imagination?). The article summary is developed somewhat, but the full article is not public access.

I like examples from old games. I think these are more educating than games played by current grandmasters. It's huge difference between levels.

@lukcza said in #24:
> I like examples from old games. I think these are more educating than games played by current grandmasters. It's huge difference between levels.

Yes I agree very much. In fact also players like Alekhine played a lot against amateurs when he did simultaneous displays, so you can quite a range of mistakes to learn from if you wanted to check those simul games as well.

after doing visualisation course from chessable in January. my blitz rating in chesscom increased 200 points in 2 weeks. 150 points over previous all time high over more than 2000 blitz games.

I was also doing other things during those 2 weeks. But doing visualisation course was the unique thing I had done.