Chess History And Reminiscences
among the best samples of human memory, till memory shall be
no more. The ability of fixing on the mind the entire plan of two
chess tables without seeing either, with the multiplied vicissitudes
of two and thirty pieces in possible employment on each table, is a
wonder of such magnitude as could not be credible without
repeated experience of the fact."
Philidor himself notes also, being of opinion that an entire
collection of the games he has played without looking over the chess
board would not be of any service to amateurs, he will only publish
a few parties which he has played against three players at once,
subjoining the names of his respectable adversaries in order to
prove and transmit to posterity a fact of which future ages might
otherwise entertain some doubt.
During the years 1855-6 and 7, Louis Paulsen at Chicago, and
other cities in the west of America, first accomplished the feat of
playing ten games at chess simultaneously, without seeing the board
or pieces, now familiarly called Blindfold Chess; and at Bristol, in
1861, and at Simpson's Divan, London, in the same year, he repeated
the performance, on the last occasion meeting twelve very
powerful opponents.
The phenomenon Paul Morphy, from New Orleans, when twenty
years of age only, conducted eight games blindfold at Birmingham,
in August, 1858, losing one to Dr. Salmon of Dublin, drawing
with Mr. Alderman Thomas Avery, and winning the remaining
six. Morphy at Paris, in March, 1859, repeated the performance,
and won all eight games; his play was superb, and all agree has
never been surpassed, if equalled, and drew forth press notice
even more gushing than that bestowed upon his predecessor
Philidor.
J. H. Blackburne appeared in 1862, and with Louis Paulsen,
the pioneer of the art upon the extended scale, was engaged by
the British Chess Association at their International Gathering, in
1862, to give blindfold exhibitions; each played ten games with
great success, amid much appreciation. Mr. Blackburne's
subsequent thirty years blindfold chess is too well known to require
comment, he is admitted to be second to none in the exposition of
the art, some even claim superiority for him over all others.
Dr. Zukertort, on the 21st December, 1876, at the St. George's
Chess Club, contended blindfold with sixteen competitors,
comprising the best players that could be found to oppose him. From
a physiological point of view Zukertort's powers appear the most
extraordinary, because his abstraction for chess was far less
pronounced, and his mind seemed to be of a more varied and even
discursive kind. It would scarcely have been less surprising to
have seen players like Staunton, Buckle, or Der Lasa performing
blindfold chess.
The number of players of all grades of chess force who now
can play without seeing the board is amazing; a tournament for
blindfold play only could well be held. The faculty of playing
chess blindfold is thought to apply mostly to those who have
extraordinary retentive memories of a peculiar kind, and great
powers of abstraction very slightly brought into action or diverted
by other pursuits. This seems to be confirmed in considering the
great chess exponents who have played blindfold, and those who
have not, a comparison has been adduced but which might seem
invidious to expatiate on.
NOTE. Sachieri, a Jesuit of Turin, who lived in the 17th century,
had a most surprising memory. He could play at chess with three
different persons without seeing one of the three boards, his
representative only telling him every move of the adversary.
Sachieri would direct him what man to play, and converse with
company all the time. If there happened a dispute about the
place of a man, he could repeat every move made by both parties
from the beginning of the game, in order to ascertain where the
man ought to stand. He could deliver a sermon an hour long in the
same words and order in which he heard it. This is very remarkable,
as the Italian sermons are unmethodical and unconnected, and full
of sentences and maxims.
Blackburne does the same. At one of the few blindfold performances
I have witnessed by him, viz., at Montreal, in 1889, during our
adjournment to dinner the positions had become disarranged, but
Blackburne on resumption called over all the eight games, with
great facility, and perfect accuracy, the resumption being delayed
not more than five minutes.
The Razi referred to above (called by our medieval writers Rhasis)
was a celebrated physician of Bagdad, where he died about A.D. 922.
The Author of the British Museum M.S. says:
"Some men from long practice, have arrived at such a degree of
perfection in this art, as to have played blindfold at four or
five boards at one and the same time, and never to have committed
a mistake in any of the games." He further tells us that--"some
have been known to have recited poetry, or told amusing stories,
or conversed with the company present, during the progress of the
contest." In another sentence he says--"I have seen it written in
a book, that one man played blindfold at ten boards simultaneously,
and gained all the games; he even corrected many errors committed
by his opponents and friends, in describing the moves.
It was a saying in the East, "He plays at chess like Al Suli."
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