I was a decently rated chess player (nationally) in my youth and I have level 5 aphantasia i.e. I see nothing at all.
While I absolutely cannot play or picture game states without a physical board in front of me like most pros can, I had no great difficulty otherwise.
I practiced with a friend at the same general skill level that was very good at playing sans voir, which incidentally is how I realized I don’t have the same mental imagery as him. This was ~25 years ago, and I didn’t run into the word aphantasia until around 2020.
Wait, how do you get ranked for aphantasia? I did sure have it but have never had a name for it
As I understand it it’s simply differing amounts of realism in one’s recall.
I did discuss it briefly with my physician but he more or less shrugged it away as a novelty that can’t be helped. He showed me the chart on Wikipedia and mentioned the lack of information about it in general but also that there might be some overlap with autism.
I have a feeling that it’ll be a while before it can be adequately explained.
