The Arabs are the first we read of among the people of the
East who excelled in playing chess without seeing the board. The
introduction to one of Dr. Lee's manuscripts in his Oriental
collection, relates examples of the early Mohammedan doctors,
and even of companions and followers of the Prophet, who either
themselves played chess or were spectators of the game. Some of
them also are said to have played behind their back, i.e. without
looking at the board, and it may not be generally known that the
manuscript in the British Museum 16,856 copied in 1612, which
is a translation and abridgment of an older work in Arabic,
contains a full chapter with a lengthy description, combined with
maxims and advice for playing chess without seeing the board.
Al Suli, who died A.D. 946, and Ali Shatranji, at Timur's Court,
1377 A.D. (the chess giants of their respective ages), were each
highly proficient in Blindfold Chess. A man named Buzecca, in
1266, on the invitation of Guido du Novelli, the friend and
munificent patron of Dante, and who was Master of Ravenna, gave
an exhibition of his powers at Florence, which occasioned much
surprise and admiration.
The unknown author of the famous and unique manuscript,
bequeathed by Major Price, the eminent Orientalist, to the Asiatic
Society, which has formed the subject of so much discussion among
the learned, parades his own chess prowess, in a manner not
unworthy of some great chess exponents of the present age. "And
many a one," he says in his preface, "has experienced a relief
from sorrow and affliction in consequence of this magic recreation";
and this same fact has been asserted by the celebrated physician
Muhammad Zakaria Razi, in his book entitled: "The Essence of
Things": "And such is likewise the opinion of the physician Ali
Bin Firdaus, as I shall notice more fully towards the end of the
present works, for the composing of which I am in the hope of
receiving my reward from God, who is Most High and Most
Glorious."
The philosopher continues: "I have passed my life since the
age of fifteen years among all the masters of chess living in my
time, and since that period till now, when I have arrived at middle
age, I have travelled through Irak Arab, and Irak Ajam, and
Khurasan, and the regions of Mawara al Nahr (Transoxania), and
I have there met with many a master in this art, and I have played
with all of them, and through the favour of Him who is Adorable
and Most High I come off victorious."
"Likewise in playing without seeing the board I have overcome
most opponents, nor had they the power to cope with me. I the
humble sinner now addressing you, have frequently played with
one opponent over the board and at the same time I have carried
on four different games, with as many adversaries, without seeing
the board, whilst I conversed freely with my friends all along,
and through the Divine favour I conquered them all. Also in the
great chess, I have invented sundry positions as well as several
openings, which no one else ever imagined or contrived."
Notwithstanding the accounts and allusions to Blindfold Chess
here referred to, it would seem to have been generally unknown
to us at the time when Philidor performed his intellectual feat of
playing two games blindfold, and one over the board, on several
occasions at the St. James Street Chess Club, about a century ago.
The club which was held at Parsloes Hotel, was formed in 1770,
and its members comprised many prominent, celebrated, and
distinguished men: Pitt, Earl of Chatham, C. J. Fox, Rockingham,
St. John, Mansfield, Wedderburn, Sir G. Elliott, and other
well-known names are recorded among the visitors and spectators there.
Whilst the players who contended against Philidor at the slightest
shade of odds included Sir Abraham Janssens, the Hon. Henry
Conway, Count Bruhl, Mr. George Atwood (mathematician and
one of Pitt's financial secretaries), Dr. Black, the Rev. Mr.
Boudler, and Mr. Cotter. Stamma, of Aleppo, engaged in London
on works of translation, and who was one of the best chess players,
was matched against Philidor, but won only one out of eight games.
These contests took place at Slaughter's Coffee House, in St.
Martin's Lane, long a principal meeting place for leading chess
players. Philidor does not seem to have tried more than two
games blindfold, but such was the astonishment they caused at the
time, that doubts were expressed whether such an intellectual feat
would ever be repeated; and certainly from the tenor of press
notices of the event, and Philidor's own memoranda, it seems that
it could not have been contemplated or conceived that
performances on the scale we have witnessed in our days by Louis
Paulsen, 1; Paul Morphy, 2; J. H. Blackburne, 3; and Dr. J. H.
Zukertort, 4, would become, comparatively speaking, so common
in a future generation. The following article, from a newspaper
of the period, was thought to reflect with tolerable accuracy the
general impression prevailing at the time in regard to these
performances.
The World, a London newspaper in its issue of the 28th May,
1783, makes the following remarks upon Philidor's performance
of playing two games simultaneously without sight of the board.
It scarcely, however, comes up to our American cousin's views of
Morphy in 1858, just three-quarters of a century later. It says:
"This brief article is the record of more than sport and fashion,
it is a phenomenon in the history of man and so should be hoarded
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."
So that many believed him to be the inventor of this game, but
erroneously.
The Arabians say that a certain great man showed one of his
friends his garden, full of fine flowers, and said to him,
"Did you ever see a finer sight than this? Yes," he replied,
"Al Suli's game at chess is more beautiful than this garden
and everything that is in it."
Al Suli died A. D. 946.
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The writer is not enamoured of blindfold play, preferring not
to attempt to do that without his eyes, which he can do better
with. "Blindfold Play" the term used nowadays, or "playing
behind your back," as one of the old Arabian manuscripts has it,
seems not the most happy expression for the art, playing "Sans
Voir" or without sight of chess board or pieces clearly expresses
it. Good players, actually blind, may be mentioned, the writer
has played with such, in a simultaneous exhibition of chess play
at Sheffield, a game against two blind boys from the Asylum,
proved one of the best contested and most interesting in the series,
and these bright but afflicted lads evidently, with their kind
attendant, derived the greatest pleasure from the meeting.
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