Blindfold chess

Blindfold chess, also called sans voir from the French for without seeing, is chess played without sight of the board or touch of the pieces, so each player has to hold the whole position in memory. Moves are passed on in a recognised chess notation, and in simultaneous exhibitions an intermediary usually relays them between the blindfold player and the opponents. The earliest named practitioner is Sa'id bin Jubair, who lived in the Middle East in the seventh and eighth centuries, and a blindfold event is recorded in Florence in 1266. Philidor made it famous in eighteenth-century Europe by playing several games at once, and Paul Morphy's 1858 Paris exhibition against eight strong players, with six wins and two draws, became a landmark. Records climbed through Pillsbury, Reti, Alekhine, Koltanowski and Najdorf to Timur Gareyev, who met 48 opponents in 2016. Exhibitions were banned in the USSR in the 1930s as a supposed risk to health.