| # | Player | Country | Elo |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Magnus Carlsen | ๐ณ๐ด | 2839 |
| 2 | Fabiano Caruana | ๐บ๐ธ | 2786 |
| 3 | Hikaru Nakamura | ๐บ๐ธ | 2780 |
| 4 | Ding Liren ๐ | ๐จ๐ณ | 2780 |
| 5 | Alireza Firouzja | ๐ซ๐ท | 2777 |
| 6 | Ian Nepomniachtchi | ๐ท๐บ | 2771 |
| 7 | Anish Giri | ๐ณ๐ฑ | 2760 |
| 8 | Gukesh D | ๐ฎ๐ณ | 2758 |
| 9 | Viswanathan Anand | ๐ฎ๐ณ | 2754 |
| 10 | Wesley So | ๐บ๐ธ | 2753 |
September 4 - September 22
I've always suspected my wife has this, and I just inquired. She said she can't picture faces or things, but can recognize them. Her memories are more like feelings. I asked if she were separated from our daughter in an apocalypse, if she could remember what she looked like. She said, "I have no idea what she looks like right now."
Now she's in kind of a dark place.
I was a decently rated chess player (nationally) in my youth and I have level 5 aphantasia i.e. I see nothing at all.
While I absolutely cannot play or picture game states without a physical board in front of me like most pros can, I had no great difficulty otherwise.
I practiced with a friend at the same general skill level that was very good at playing sans voir, which incidentally is how I realized I don't have the same mental imagery as him. This was ~25 years ago, and I didn't run into the word aphantasia until around 2020.
Aphantasia is a condition that prevents people from creating mental imagery . It is rare, affecting only about 4% of the global population..... My visual memory is like looking through a frosted window. I see some colors and blobby shape and that's about it.
4% is a pretty big chunk of the population. That's 1 in every 25 people. Which makes it all the more insane that nobody realised it existed as a condition until just a few years ago.
It just doesn't come up all that much. Folks live without knowing they are different.
And it is on a spectrum. Some folks is nothing others are can force a few pictures if they have to but aren't clear. I dunno.
I don't see things in my head, it's still blank but i can imagine the concepts. Do i have aphantasia? My dreams are vivid tho
I have a middling case of aphantasia. I can create a basic image, blurry shapes, low detail, etc. with a lot of focus and concentration. I struggle immensely with faces I haven't seen a lot, and spatial orientation. Beyond that, I simply think in terms of words more than images.
As far as chess, this means I'm logically thinking out the moves, rather than mentally picturing it. I tend to get a bit overwheled trying to internalize the new board state after more than a couple of moves. I also don't play chess much, though, and would probably simply train that ability by playing more, just like someone without aphantasia will train visualizing more board shapes ahead.
A friend of mine has aphantasia. It seems like she has trouble with some board games but not with others. If she can stare st the layout of the board she's usually fine. We've never played chess.
In addition to not being able to see anything in her head, she also cannot hear her own thoughts.
That last part is particularly interesting... So maybe it's not just visual reasoning.
Well I don't play chess in my head. That doesn't stop me from being a reasonably decent chess player when there's a physical board in front of me. I'm not sure why aphantasia would be considered relevant to chess?
Do you have it? I'm just curious how someone would plan multiple moves ahead without an image of changes to the board in their head.
"Well, if I move the bishop here, then it's pinning the knight to the king. Then I can capture over here, threatening a fork." etc.
I do. Feel free to ask further if you have more questions.
Basically, when I'm playing, and trying to look multiple moves ahead, at least for me it's like a logic tree. Exactly like what you described. I just don't visualise any images. To me, I'll keep track that the bishop will be on this spot, this spot will be empty, etc etc. I just need memory for that, it doesn't involve any imagery.
That's fascinating. What about controlled squares? Like, visualizing the cross-shaped lines extending from a bishop? Or the asterisk-shaped lines extending from the queen?
In my head, I sort of "highlight" them like this:
Same thing, but with knowledge instead of colors. Like how you can (I assume) know your birthday without visualizing a calendar.
You have an abstract concept of the board in your head. The logical connections are still there, there's just no image of a chess board that represents the moves. Basically the same way a computer thinks without images, too.
I have trouble visualizing faces in my mind. The more I focus on "seeing" somebody's face the less accurate it is.
Can you visualise the correct number of fingers on hands? I fear you might be an AI.
It's funny, people make aphantasia out to be a huge disability but ironically that just feels like a lack of imagination on their part. The things where you actually need to see images instead of just abstract thinking are pretty rare.
What does it mean to visualize a chess position?
I don't exactly "render" the board or pieces. It's like when you look at a board, and then make connections and feel whatever you feel, I just recreate those things.
I assume it's similar to other people, but the phrase "not being able to create images" sounds like people do "render" things in their head.
It's not the same as seeing it visually, but yeah I'd say it's a mental "render". Sort of like how having a song stuck in your head isn't the same as actually hearing it.
You move the pieces around in your mental picture of the board to reassess what the potential position would look like.
That's so far removed from how my brain actually works, it might as well be magic. I simply stare at the board and make mental notes which spaces would have which pieces, but there's nothing visual to it. Take away the board and I can't do a thing to plan my next moves.
For the record, I also never have any songs stuck in my head. When listening to stuff, I can recognize wrong notes and such, but I cannot in any form listen to music in my head. Heck, I can barely hum the tunes of my favorite songs after listening to them hundreds of times.
It's incredible how our brains can accomplish the same things in different ways.
It's not like the average player can picture the full board state and play blindfolded chess like some GMs can, but I'd expect that it's pretty normal to visualize pieces on potential spots for tactics.
It's not the same. Aphantasisa is the total absence of being able able to picture things mentally. I have it to a degree except it takes me some effort to picture things. I can't imagine scenes from books. I get like a fleeting image.
I have this and have often wondered if it works against me. I have also been weirded out that itโs normal for people to actually โseeโ pictures in their head ever since I found out about this.
Anyways yes. This must be why I am not great at chess. Letโs blame it!
like people who don't have it? Chess is strategy, not art, or engineering.
Chess is a series of strategic moves. You just make them. Are yall out here experiencing some kind of bizarre 5d chess i've never experienced before?
source - me, i have it.
I just think about what moves they may make from what I can physically see. It works well enough but I'm not good at chess. That's most likely my ADHD working against me though not the aphantasia. Maybe both lol.