@petergill
Joined over 4 years agoI discovered in 2007 that I have aphantasia - a few years before it had a name. I am ranked as the best bridge player in Australia and play bridge in the Australian Open Team. Some say that memory is important for playing bridge well - maybe they’re wrong. I have zero musical ability.
I’m not very good at chess but I’m world class at bridge. At bridge, I’m a grandmaster who plays in the Australian Open Team. Aphantasia gives me several advantages at bridge. I have quite a few friends who have aphantasia - they too are good bridge players. None of us are great at chess. At chess, I try to use strategies like creating open files to make up for my inability to visualise what’s going on.
Billy - I’m the same as you. I first discovered I had aphantasia in 2007. Because aphantasia wasn’t named until 2015, I wanted in 2007 a way to find other people on the internet who had aphantasia. After a few false starts trying other phrases, I found some by googling “dream without pictures”. All the ones I found that way in 2007 seemed to me to have successful interesting lives. A good example is a woman named Renee Fuller in California who invented the ball stick bird method of teaching reading (you can google it). Due to her aphantasia, she had trouble learning to read as a child so she invented that method which reduced the amount of dyslexia diagnoses (misdiagnoses?) in the world.