Carnage. Chess engines are now significantly stronger than the best human players. Using an engine makes a real difference to the way you play correspondence chess and the outcome of the game. It’s not in the type of moves you make – engines will recommend the logical rather than the natural move, even if it looks non-standard. Instead it’s in the accuracy of calculation. Human players make tactical errors. Chess engines do not. So if your opponent blunders during the game, you know he’s not using an engine.

This is how Barking’s county captain put it at the start of the season: “An important point to note is that use of computer engines is permitted – nearly all players in the first and second divisions use engines and many in Division 3… [to Barking, the newbie:] I expect you’ll be using an engine; if not please let me know and I’ll put you in the Div 3 team.”

In tournaments at a higher level, where the use of engines is routine, the engine v engine contest is very often a draw. For example in one of my current ICCF tournaments, a 7-player all-play-all with an average rating of 1950, 20 out of the 21 games have finished and 17 of these were drawn with only three decisive games (and one of these was a win on time). The only game outstanding is one of mine, against the tournament’s highest-rated player. I am winning this, and it’s only still going on because my opponent has slowed the game to a crawl.

As you might imagine, a game of engine vs non-engine can be a real mismatch. This type of game is often a miniature (under 25 moves) with strong tactical strokes. Which leads me to…

Visualisation. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the ability to calculate accurately is one of the most important skills in chess. Training and testing this skill is the basis of one of the most popular types of chess book – the tactical puzzle book. These give you a diagram and ask you to find the continuation, essentially calculating what should happen next, without moving the pieces.

What’s less well understood is how you go about developing the ability to calculate. Enter visualisation – the practice of calculating variations without looking at the board at all. Visualisation without the board is the most effective way of developing clarity and the depth of calculation. This is what the specialists in blindfold chess do all the time, sometimes in a spectular way through simultaneous exhibitions against many players.

This is the subject of chapter 2, ‘Blindfold Chess and Stepping-Stone Diagrams’, in Jonathan Tisdall’s book ‘Improve Your Chess Now’ (Cadogan, 1997). He quotes Dr Siegbert Tarrasch:

The whole game of chess is played as a blindfold game. For instance, every combination of five moves is executed mentally, with the only difference that one has the board before him. The pieces which one is looking at very often hinder the calculations.

Tisdall draws attention to the practice of some GMs (Shirov, Ivanchuk, Svidler, for example) who “often calculate variations by suddenly staring into space instead of at the board. Clearly, they have some built-in belief that they can more clearly focus their visualisation of critical variations by looking away from the board.”

You can try this at home without going out to find an actual opponent and playing an actual game. Take the score of any chess game (I don’t mean the result, but the set of moves as seen on the page), and at first the shorter the better, and try to play through the game in your head. See if you can visualise the position after each move. This is hard work, particularly when you first do it because the relevant chess muscles are weak and undeveloped, and the further you go into the game, the harder it becomes to maintain a clear mental picture of the board. But it is rewarding and it is a very good way to improve your game.

A similar method is to go through a book of chess games with diagrams at intervals in each game. Try to visualise the game without playing the moves on a board, using the diagrams as an aid or stepping-stone (another technique recommended in Tisdall’s book).

For starting out, I recommend ‘Blindfold Opening Visualisation: 100 Chess Puzzles’ by Martin B Justesen (Say Chess Publishing, 2021). This gives you the score of 100 games take from Lichess, all of 10 moves or fewer, and featuring tactical points, where you have to find the continuation.

Which brings us back to the carnage of engine-inspired destruction. Here are four of Barking’s miniature wins from 2022. Play through them with a board if you like, but if you feel up to it, play through them blindfold, and see if you can keep track of what’s going on.

Game 1
Start: 23 May 2022, End: 3 June 2022 (11 days)
White: Don Wade (USA – 1780), Black: Rodney Barking (ENG – 1800)
B99: Sicilian, Najdorf (7…Be7 main line)
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Be7 8.Qf3 Qc7 9.O-O-O Nbd7 10.Bd3 b5 11.g4 Bb7 12.Rhg1 h6 13.Bxf6 Bxf6 14.Qe3 Qb6 15.Nce2 g5 16.Kb1 gxf4 17.Qf2 e5 18.c3 O-O-O 19.Rgf1 exd4 0-1

Game 2
Start: 23 May 2022, End: 10 June 2022 (18 days)
White: Rodney Barking (ENG – 1800), Black: Horst Wilshusen (GER – 1044)
C18: French, Winawer, Classical variation.
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Qc7 7.Qg4 f5 8.Qg3 Nc6 9.Nf3 Nge7 10.Qxg7 Rg8 11.Qxh7 cxd4 12.Bb5 Bd7 13.Bxc6 Bxc6 14.O-O dxc3 15.Bg5 Rf8 16.Nd4 Qd7 17.Qh5+ Kd8 18.Qh6 Re8 19.Nxe6+ Kc8 20.Nd4 Kc7 21.e6 Qd8 22.Nxf5 1-0

Game 3
Start: 1 October 2022, End: 20 October 2022 (19 days)
White: Rodney Barking (ENG – 2016), Black: Alan Ruffle (ENG – 1509)
C41: Philidor, Improved Hanham variation
1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nbd7 4.Nf3 e5 5.Bc4 Nb6 6.dxe5 Nxc4 7.exf6 gxf6 8.Nd4 Rg8 9.Qe2 Ne5 10.f4 Nc6 11.Be3 Bh6 12.Qh5 Nxd4 13.Bxd4 Bxf4 14.O-O Be5 15.Bxe5 dxe5 16.Qxh7 Rg6 17.Qh8+ Ke7 18.Nd5+ Kd7 19.Nxf6+ 1-0

Game 4
Start: 1 October 2022, End: 23 October 2022 (22 days)
White: Francis Watson (ENG – 1800), Black: Rodney Barking (ENG – 2016)
D94: Grünfeld, 5.e3
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.e3 O-O 6.c5 Nbd7 7.Be2 Re8 8.O-O e5 9.Qb3 c6 10.Rd1 e4 11.Nd2 h5 12.a3 Ng4 13.h3 Nh6 14.Qa2 Qg5 15.Nf1 Nxc5 16.dxc5 Bxh3 17.Ng3 Nf5 18.gxh3 Nxg3 19.fxg3 Qxg3+ 20.Kf1 Re6 0-1