This Sunday as part of Quadmania, the UMBC Chess Program will present a Blindfold Chess Spectacular. UMBC alum International Grandmaster Timur Gareyev will:
- 9am – simultaneously play ten challengers while blindfolded
- 1pm – explain how he does it
- 2-6pm – play a knockout match against UMBC’s top three players where
everyone will be blindfolded.
The event is free and open to the public.
Gareyev is preparing to break the world record this fall in Prague by playing and defeating 50 challengers while he is blindfolded (the world record is 46).
UMBC students AbhilashPuranik (CSEE) and Nathanial Wong will play and help with the chess technology. Using four DGT boards, we will display four games and broadcast them live to the Internet (via the website chess24). In the DGT technology, each piece has an RFID chip broadcasting its identify. Antennas under each row and column receive the signals. Software interpolates the positions, generates a graphical display, and expresses the move in standard PGN notation.
Pieter Heesters, a 6th grader who won a scholarship to UMBC by winning the 2016 Maryland Scholastic Chess Championship, will also play.