GM Bartłomiej Heberla played three games at once without seeing a single board. Behind him, three vertical boards showed every position to the room, and Magdalena Budkiewicz moved the pieces as he called the moves. The audience saw everything. The player saw nothing. It looks like a superpower, it is a trained skill, and it is surprisingly easy to stage. This guide shows how.
Published · ~12 min read
What blindfold chess is, and who makes the show work
In blindfold chess the player never looks at the position and never touches a piece. Moves are announced aloud in chess notation, someone else plays them on a board, and the player keeps the entire game in memory. Sometimes that means a literal blindfold. Often it is simpler: the player simply sits where the board is out of sight. That asymmetry is what turns a chess game into a show, and four roles make it work.
- The blindfold player. Usually a titled player: GM, WGM, FM and so on.
- The opponent or opponents. One person, or a team of several who see the board and play normally. With a team, agree in advance who makes the final decision, or time disappears into debate.
- The piece mover. Repeats each move aloud, checks that it was understood and plays it on the demonstration board.
- The host. Talks to the player and to the opponents, explains the position to the room and keeps the story moving. At smaller events the host and the piece mover are often the same person.
The host largely decides how good the show is. A good host plays chess well, never confuses squares (a wrong square makes the blindfold player look as if they had made the mistake) and keeps the conversation going with both sides.
Four events, four ways to stage it
ChessboArt boards were used at all four events below. Each one shows a different way a blindfold game can work in front of an audience.
Budapest: the festival stage
The Global Chess Festival opens its day with a segment it calls "Chess on the Board of Imagination", which is its name for blindfold chess. On 26 September 2026 at the Hungarian National Gallery, GM Judit Polgár played Hungarian grandmaster Gergely Antal without seeing the board, and the game ended in a draw, according to ChessBase's festival report. Her sister, WGM Sofia Polgár, stood next to a ChessboArt wall board on an easel beside the stage and presented the moves of the game to the audience. The full story of that day is in our Global Chess Festival 2026 report.
Superliga Rapid: three boards at once
At Superliga Rapid, a Polish club tournament, GM Bartłomiej Heberla played three games simultaneously, as in the photo at the top. Magdalena Budkiewicz, a Polish junior champion (under 18, 2021) who also presented at the tournament, moved the pieces on three ChessboArt wall boards. The audience had three positions to follow at once, and each extra board raises the stakes.
Silesia City Center: chess in a shopping center
WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili played blindfold on a stage in Silesia City Center in Katowice, in the middle of a large children's chess tournament, while I moved the pieces on a ChessboArt board. Many children watched. A blindfold show does not need a chess hall: in a busy public space, a visible position lets people who have never played understand at once what is happening.
SGH: a blindfold finale for managers
In cooperation with SGH Warsaw School of Economics, and together with Piotr Jan Czajkowski (SGH, who also runs Liga Biznesu in Warsaw), I led a strategy training for the management team of a credit union. It explored the analogies between business and chess, and it ended with a blindfold game that I played myself, with the position shown on a ChessboArt wall board.
Why a vertical board works so well
A blindfold game is invisible by nature. Without a board the room can read, you have a person sitting in silence. A large vertical board changes that in four ways.
- More people can follow the position. A board on a wall or an easel is readable from much further away than one on a table.
- The room can join in. Spectators see the same position as the opponents, look for threats, predict moves and cheer, so the show becomes an interaction.
- The player stays part of the picture. Without a mask, the audience sees the player looking into space while calculating. That contrast is part of the spectacle.
- It feels traditional. Real pieces moving by hand across a real board give the game a slow, old-fashioned rhythm that a projected position on a screen does not.
The ChessboArt boards in the photos have coordinates around the edge, so the audience can match each announced move to a square. If you are choosing equipment, you can start with our wall-mounted chess boards.
How to set up the stage
Decide where the player sits before anything else, because the rest of the stage follows from that choice. Two layouts work well.
Layout 1: a stool behind the board
The demonstration board faces the audience. The player sits on a stool behind it, so the board stands between the player and the room. The player cannot see the position, while the room sees both the position and the player. It is the simplest layout, it needs no blindfold, and it is how most of the exhibitions I have taken part in were arranged.
Layout 2: a stool in front of the board, with a blindfold
The player sits facing the board with a blindfold or mask over the eyes. It is more theatrical, and it reads from the back row without a word of explanation: nobody needs to be told that the player cannot see. It also photographs well. The trade-off is that the audience loses the player's face and gaze. Test the mask in advance, because a small gap is all it takes for the effect to fall apart.
Everything else on stage
- Piece mover. Stands beside the demonstration board, not in front of it, so nobody blocks the view. Repeats each move aloud before playing it.
- Opponents. Sit at a normal table with their own board, visible to the room and within hearing of the announcements. If you use a chess clock, it goes on their table.
- Host. Has a microphone and stands where both the board and the room are in view. In a large room the player needs a microphone too, so the moves are audible.
- Notation. Agree one way of announcing moves and keep to it, for example "knight f3" or "bishop takes e5". Repeat every move before it is played. Accuracy is essential: a misheard move or a piece on the wrong square can confuse the entire room.
- Rehearsal. Run a few moves with the whole team before the doors open.
- Timing in the schedule. A blindfold show works as the opening of a festival day, a break in a tournament, a number on a public stage or the finale of a training.
Ideas that turn it into a show
The core of the show is the game, but a good host adds a few extra moments. None of these needs extra equipment, so pick the ones that suit your audience.
- A question from the room. At a quiet moment, ask a spectator to choose a piece. The player says where it stands without looking.
- Guess the next move. The host asks the audience what they expect the player to play, then reveals it.
- The audience as the opponent. A team of spectators plays against the blindfold player and talks through every move out loud, with a captain who makes the final decision.
- A child opens the game. The youngest spectator plays the first move for White on the demonstration board.
- The replay. At the end, put the key position back on the board and let the host explain the turning point.
Time, the clock and who can do it
Time and the clock. A blindfold game often takes longer for amateur opponents who can see the board than for the blindfold player. Do not assume the show will end quickly just because the format looks simple. If you need a firm schedule, add a chess clock and agree the time control beforehand, instead of hoping that the game finishes at a convenient moment. In my view an experienced simultaneous player can handle a game in about five minutes, so a short time control is realistic and adds pace and tension.
Who can do it. There is no official threshold, and in practice the picture is simple. Strong players usually know that they can play blindfold. Most amateurs know that they cannot yet. Few people sit in between. In my experience roughly 1800 Elo is enough to play a whole game, and titled players have far more in hand, so treat the number as a rule of thumb.
If you are not sure where you stand, test it: how many moves can you calculate without a board, how clearly can you picture the position, can you solve problems without touching the pieces? One day you notice that you can play a whole game, at first with mistakes, but you can. It is a trained skill, not a gift. For the managers at SGH the lesson was practical: you do not have to see everything to decide well, you have to recognize patterns.
A record that meant more than chess
People have played blindfold chess for centuries, and for most of that time it was considered close to miraculous. The story that stays with me is Miguel Najdorf's. He was born in Grodzisk Mazowiecki in 1910 and was known in Poland as Mieczysław. In August 1939 he traveled to Buenos Aires to play for Poland at the Chess Olympiad. The Second World War broke out during the tournament, and he stayed in Argentina, becoming a citizen in 1944.
In 1943, in Rosario, he played 40 opponents blindfold at once. In 1947, in São Paulo, he raised the record to 45 boards. The sporting achievement had a private purpose: according to ChessBase, he hoped that news of the exhibition would travel to Poland and let his family know he was alive. He never heard from them. They had been murdered in the Holocaust.
| Year | Player | Place | Boards | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1858 | Morphy | Paris | 8 | 6 wins, 2 draws |
| 1934 | Alekhine | Chicago | 32 | 19 wins, 9 draws, 4 losses |
| 1947 | Najdorf | São Paulo | 45 | 39 wins, 4 draws, 2 losses |
| 2011 | Lang | Sontheim, Germany | 46 | 25 wins, 19 draws, 2 losses |
| 2016 | Gareyev | Las Vegas | 48 | 35 wins, 7 draws, 6 losses |
Najdorf's 45 boards stood for 64 years, until Marc Lang beat it in 2011. Timur Gareyev's 48 boards took nearly 20 hours. Yet a show does not need a record to make an impression. One player, one opponent and a room full of people following every move can be enough.
Najdorf is also one of the characters in the 2023 Polish film W szachu. Ostatnia rozgrywka (Shattered Games, directed by Marek Bukowski), which follows the prewar Polish chess team up to the outbreak of the war. It includes a blindfold game in a smoky café, a reminder that this kind of exhibition was once a popular public spectacle. ChessboArt boards were used in the film, and ChessboArt is named in the end credits.
Sources: Wikipedia, Blindfold chess; ChessBase, 48 blindfold boards; ChessBase, Remembering Miguel Najdorf.
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