LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE QUALIFICATIONS REQUISITE FOR CHESS.
(TO THE EDIT011 OF THE “SPEOTATOR."
read your most able and ingenious article on " Chess" with extreme interest, but, like your correspondent of last week, I thought you did not attach sufficient importance to the judgment and other capacities that a chess-player requires, in order to play the game with great skill. I intended to offer a few reasons for thinking so, but they have already been given with much force by your correspondent.
I have not your article to refer to, but I believe you contend in substance that a person who possesses the power of blindfold play must at once see the enormous advantage of the good moves, and that such a player, owing to the power which, as you assume, this talent gives him of seeing all the good moves, must necessarily be a great player.
Your late correspondent has, I think, shown that it is not possible for even the finest player to see more than a few of the possibly good moves, and I now venture to suggest that the faculty of blindfold play may be possessed by players of very small chess-power. I am confirmed in this view by the result of several games played by me over the board with a gentleman who could, with apparent ease and without gross errors, carry on to its termination a long game without seeing the board ; and not- withstanding the possession by my adversary of a power which on your theory should have given him an enormous advantage, I won every game.
I suggest that this remarkable chess-power is not an effort of the memory, or even a conscious effort of any kind, but is a picturing-faculty, resembling, but with a difference, that possessed by some artists who are able to bring home a mental photograph of a landscape and reproduce it. A great player once told me that on playing his first blindfold game, he had a diagram of the board and men stamped on his brain, from which he played as from a book, and that he made no effort to remember the moves, but stamped his adversary's move on his mental diagram, and then, after looking at it, made his own. On playing two games, he found that he had two diagrams before him, side by side, and afterwards three. This number he found puzzling, but after making repeated efforts, he succeeded in banishing the diagrams that he did not want.
It seems to me that this picturing-power simply enables its possessor to see the game clearly in all its changes, and does not at all imply the possession of inventive power, and that the faculty may therefore be possessed by even a poor player. A blindfold player of this class :stands, I think, exactly in the position of a poor player who, conducting a game by letter, has it clearly before him, and can try all the moves and combina- tions that he is able to discover, and only those. Neither player will see the subtle moves and ingenious combinations that a really great player sees and invents in every game. A poor player with this gift sees with wonderful clearness how to make common-place moves.
You remark that most of the leading players have this gift of blindfold play, but that others of nearly equal power are without it ; and the natural inference seems to be that there are other mental chess-qualities more valuable than this picturing-faculty, wonderful as it is. Of course, when it is possessed by a great player, it must add to his power over the board, and give him an advantage over an adversary who does not possess it, because the player with this special gift will be able to try, rapidly and easily, more and longer variations than his opponeht, and can thus test more fully the soundness of any line of play that he may propose to adopt. A friend tells me that he once knew a really fine chess-player who was, in practical life, a perfect imbecile. This must surely be a very exceptional case, for I think it may be fairly said that a strong chess-player has nearly always, at least, average good-sense.
I offer these suggestions with diffidence, and entirely concur with the greater portion of your article.—I am, Sir, &c., A. H.
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