Latest News

Knight Race

A new game mode has been added: Knight Race. You'll hear 2 squares and the goal is to select the squares that form a knight's shortest path between the two squares. For example, if you hear "a1 → a2", the shortest paths are "start → b3 → c1 → end" and "start → c2 → b3 → end", so you must select "b3 c1" or "c2 b3" (6 taps).

• Knight Race 1 has 14 exercises. The start and end have a smaller visual distance to each other and there is a maximum of 4 moves.
• Knight Race 2 has 35 exercises and covers all paths (2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 moves).

🎉 Timur Gareyev links to blindfold-chess.app

Holding the official Guinness Book of World Records title for the most simultaneous blindfold chess games (48 boards!), 🏆 Grandmaster Timur Gareyev (nicknamed Blindfold King) is the first person who comes to mind when we think about the incredible possibilities of blindfold chess.

We are thrilled that Timur has linked to blindfold-chess.app on his website BlindfoldKing.com!

Thank you very much, Timur. We hope that this will help more people discover the joy of blindfold chess ❤️

Diagonal Race

A new game mode has been added: Diagonal Race. In this game mode, you'll hear 2 squares, for example "c1" and "e7". Can a bishop move from the first square to the second square in 2 moves? In this case there are 2 possible solutions: "g5" or "a3". Select both solutions in any order. If a bishop cannot move to the second square (because their color is different), swipe from the white square in the center to the right. How fast can you do the 26 exercises covering all diagonal path types?

Until version 159, taps were only registered if they were brief and perfectly still. While this ensured that accidental touches wouldn't trigger unintended moves, it also raised the barrier for new players — especially for those trying to break their Quadrant Race record.

We changed this as follows:

• Your tap is now handled the exact moment you touch the screen
• Canceling a partial selection is now only possible by swiping from the square in the center to the left (instead of from any position to the left)
• If you find the tap handling too sensitive and want to prevent accidental moves, you can enable the "Confirm Moves" setting. Then, during a game, confirm moves by swiping from the center to the right.

As always, we love hearing from you! Feel free to send us an email at hi@blindfold-chess.app.

New video: Master square color awareness and chessboard visualization

Today's release (app version 158) is all about making the app more accessible for beginners.

The new features are:

• A new "Help" option: you can now choose to show an empty board during the game or even a board with circles for the pieces.
• A new "See Board" menu item is available when viewing the PGN. You can step through all the moves of the game, seeing the pieces on the board.

It's now possible to start a game from any position!

Beginners can now start a game with fewer pieces, for example a king and a pawn/rook. (Hint for teachers: send the piece placement part of a FEN string to a student and ask them to paste it in the app.)

Advanced players can set up a hard position and start from there.

Instead of "Position: Standard", select "Position: Custom" and then update the FEN string to your desired position.

(App version 152.)

We've added a new game mode: Quadrant Race. Have fun!

See the User Guide (app version 151) for more information.

Streaming or teaching?

We've refined the explanations about streaming via the internet (Option A) and Bluetooth (Option B). We've also added a new feature: you can now show a touch-through chessboard (Option C) directly in the app!

See the User Guide (app version 146) for more information.

New video: BLINDFOLD 960 CHESS memorization HACK

On 30 August 2025 we first published (on X) the idea of using a 5-letter code to memorize any 960 chess starting position. Now we've made a YouTube video demonstrating it a bit more detailed:

Edit on 8 Feb 2026: we no longer use X, because that requires users to log in before they can see posts.

New video: How to Learn Blindfold Chess

🏅 Nova Stone is the first external person to have written about blindfold-chess.app 🏅

A real mile-Stone 🥳

Big thanks to Tata Steel Chess for the chance to showcase the app this Jan & Feb 2026 to so many players! ♟️

Now blindfold-chess.app is going global fast 🌐

Another amazing day at Tata Steel Chess!

People noting the originality of this invention.
People offering to share blindfold-chess.app with their club & friends.
Connections being made with chess streamers.

This year may be a "boom"! 🚀

That was fun at Tata Steel Chess.

People were excited that blindfold-chess.app is free to use. Had some great conversations about measuring learning progress and about visualization: do you "see" light or do you "know" space?

See you again on Wednesday!

➡️ We acquired blindfoldchess.app and let it redirect (to blindfold-chess.app)

If not using a touchscreen device, you can simulate touchscreen taps by registering keyboard keys or - since today's update - game controller buttons 🎮

This was a feature request from a chess tournament participant this month.

(Close and reopen the app to get the latest version.)

This is a flyer we hand out to all participants at a chess tournament in the Netherlands 🇳🇱 this month. In January we will also be at Tata Steel Chess! See you there 😎

An unknown blindfold-chess.app player has finished a 4-board simul 🥳

🎉Congrats 🎉

We don't know who the player is or in which country the player lives: for more information, see our privacy policy.

🥳 Thanks, unknown tester!

Less than 24 hours ago, someone found a bug: promotion choices were shown when doing an illegal pawn move to the 8th rank. The issue has been resolved. You can close and reopen the app twice to get the updated app version.

Thrilled to see that blindfold-chess.app is part of a new generation of chess apps on TrendingChess.com 📈

Edit on 8 Feb 2026: IndieChess.com has been changed to TrendingChess.com.

Thrilled to introduce a new way to play chess! The app is already public for over a month now and today videos have been shared via YouTube and X.

🏠 We acquired the domain blindfold-chess.app and moved the app here

🚀 First version of the app was published

🔧 Building started