Shad Powers, The Desert Sun 3:57 p.m. PST February 19, 2016
On Saturday, I saw a chess grand master play 12 simultaneous games while he was blindfolded and riding an exercise bike.
Go ahead and let that sink in for a second.
I’m guessing you may have some follow-up questions, so let me elaborate.
I’ve seen Michael Jordan play basketball, Roger Federer play tennis and Wayne Gretzky play hockey, but I’ve never seen anything as remarkable as what I witnessed at Demuth Community Center on Saturday.
Chess grand master Timur Gareyev, a 28-year-old Uzbekistani who went to college in Texas, visited the Coachella Valley Chess Club to put on an exhibition. He travels the U.S. playing large simultaneous chess matches entirely from memory as he sits at the front of a room on an exercise bike wearing flip-flops, a track suit and a big silver blindfold with the word “King” on it. He holds a thoughtful finger to his chin, head turned up toward the ceiling tiles, calling out chess moves in an accent that actually does sound part Russian and part Texan.
He’s a chess grand master for the new millennium, no gray-beard hunched over a chessboard.
Gareyev ascended to as high as the No. 3 player in the United States and No. 76 in the world, but as a thrill-seeker by nature, conventional chess started to bore him. He started playing blindfold chess and it was just the ticket. It fulfilled his passion for the game while pushing personal limits.
“Playing blindfold chess is like driving a race car, and regular chess is driving a regular car,” he said after Saturday’s exhibition. “It’s using the same strategy but in a more exciting and challenging way. I love it.”
So before we get into the “How the heck does he do it?” let me set the scene a little more from Saturday’s match against 12 players from the Coachella Valley Chess Club.
Gareyev gave a little lecture first and then took his seat on an exercise bike at the front of the room with six players flanking him on either side sitting at tables. Each had a chessboard in front of them but no opponent. On half the boards, Gareyev played the white pieces and on half the boards he was the black pieces.
Gareyev would audibly call out a move. Then chess club executive vice president Joe O’Connell would stand in front of the player and physically make the move. The player would then make his or her move and audibly call it out so Gareyev could visualize it.
Full article here.