It sounded an attractive chess event. The elite teens Sergey Karjakin, 17, and Magnus Carlsen, 16, the all-time No1 woman, Judit Polgar, and the combative Veselin Topalov were all in a six-player double-rounder in Bilbao last week. Unfortunately the small print was that it was blind chess, played with a keyboard and an empty chessboard, at a fast time limit. The games were littered with blunders. Monaco's Amber chess event also has blind games but there the board is on a computer screen rather than physically on the table, and this factor seems to have disoriented the GM thought patterns in Bilbao. China's Bu Xiangzhi was the surprise winner. This gimmicky chess tournament was a wasted opportunity. If the Spaniards had staged a Karjakin v Carlsen match ...

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