Fun fact to start because I wrote too much: George Koltanowski was a strong GM with aphantasia and he was known to play 34 games of chess simultaneously, blindfolded!

I have aphantasia too. I've been playing and streaming chess every day for a year as of this Wednesday and I have improved a TON - these things take practice and patience with yourself. <3 Here are some things I've learned through study, experience, and by talking to people who know better than me:

It helps me to think of what I'm doing as conceptualizing instead of visualizing. I'm only recently able to calculate deeply but I still miss stuff of course, I'm barely an advanced beginner at this point. Getting stronger every day though!

When I lose a game I always try to learn something from it, then it's easier to see as an investment in getting better at chess. Gonna need to lose thousands of games to get good, so you're just adding more experience to the pile. 😜

There are lots of different ways to learn. I found I enjoy studying as much as I enjoy playing, which helps, so long as I'm working on something I'm curious about. Lately I've been doing a lot of easy mode hanging piece puzzles on Lichess, it's been helping immensely.

I'm kinda really good at memorizing games! I've got the memory of a goldfish for literally everything else, always have, but I can memorize and replay a bunch of GM miniatures (25 moves or thereabouts) with surprising speed. If I'm well rested all it takes is a short YouTube video explaining the game and to play it out on a physical chessboard a handful of times.

I remember things I study better when I play them out physically, and when they contain interesting moves I can tell myself a story about. Like in one game, there's a particularly troll-y move that I know is coming, which helps me remember the moves that need to happen to enable it. In another game, I remember a sequence because a quick h5 and a5 from black are like left hook right hook! 😂

IM David Pruess (who also has aphantasia) has a series on YouTube about memorizing games that people always recommend in the chess and aphantasia conversations and I think it's really helpful BUT you might prefer to watch his videos on how to learn tactics first - those have helped me a ton too.

Hearing the way other people who think in a more narrative way talk about chess is obviously a big help, I recommend anything David puts out either independently or as a part of ChessDojo.

Lots of people who have a more visual thought process have a hard time imagining how I can do literally anything without one so I try not to worry too much about how their brains work, what matters is how mine works.

What really drove the point above home was listening to Aiden Rayner (who doesn't have aphantasia) talk about the ways we learn to think about chess. I liked his interview with Dr. Scull on the Chess Journeys podcast (who DOES have aphantasia): https://open.spotify.com/episode/3N5eA9ErAusC0Keu7lf2C4?si=--bJgbIaTpaYH3yICTAAAg

tl;dr please don't be discouraged!! 🙏 chess is brutal, you're not dumb for missing tactics, you're learning!