Hacker News Reader

Comment by yen223 | Hacker News Reader

Or how about:

    A CAPTCHA appears before you,
    in form of a chessboard to prove,
    that you're a real user,
    and not a computer,
    by checkmating WHITE in one move.

View on HN

I would change "a real user" with "a real user who doesn’t use a screen-reader". That’s less funny, but more accurate.

Out of curiosity: are there any known blind chess players? I guess it would be quite hardcore.

Not sure about blind, but blindfold chess is a thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindfold_chess

Ray Charles.

"Charles played chess using a special board with holes for the pieces and raised squares." [1]

"Are there any blind chess masters in the world? Have there been any throughout history? Yes. Al Sandrin, who died a few years ago, was an USBCA member who was a master." [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Charles

[2] http://www.americanblindchess.org/faq.html

There are blind go players, so I assume blind chess players also exist.

I think blind chess is a lot easier than blind go. Apparently there are master-level blind chess players, while Sensei's Wiki mentions only a 26-kyu blind go player (i.e., around the level of somebody who has been playing for about a month).

There are many blind chess players. Competitive chess rules allow blind players access to special equipment (basically an auxiliary pegged board) so that they can 'feel' the position. Really strong chess players don't actually need sight of the board and I imagine the best blind players (there are many of master strength) don't make extensive use of this provision.

In the biannual international chess 'olympiads' (team competition between countries) a multi country blind players team competes. Some other disabilities are also represented in the same way.

One of my friends spent his 2 years of military service in Israel playing chess -- up to 2 dozen chess games simultaneously, blind folded, against soldiers in the Israeli army. After his army service, he eventually ended up in grad school and later on became a professor. But more than his research papers, it is his chess playing that I remember.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com