The puzzles here come from the open Lichess puzzle database: about six million positions from real games, each with its own rating and themes. Pick a theme, such as Mate in 2 or Fork, and start solving. Your rating is calculated with Glicko-2 and changes after every puzzle.
What a chess puzzle is
A position from a game where one side has a forcing sequence that wins material or mates. Your job is to find the solution moves. If a move is wrong, Stockfish can show you why it fails.
Puzzle themes
Every puzzle in the Lichess database carries themes, and there are more than 60 of them. Staying on one theme trains one pattern.
Mate in N
Mate in 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. “Mate in 2” means two of your moves with one opponent reply between them. The longer the mate, the more defensive replies you have to check.
Tactical motifs
- Fork: one piece attacks two targets at once.
- Pin: a piece cannot move because a more valuable one stands behind it.
- Skewer: like a pin, but the more valuable piece is in front and has to move.
- Discovered attack: moving one piece opens a line for another.
- Deflection: a defender is pulled away from a key square.
- Attraction: a piece is lured onto a square where it can be attacked or pinned.
- Intermezzo: an unexpected in-between move in the middle of an exchange.
- Clearance, X-ray attack, interference, capturing the defender and other themes.
Endgames
Pawn, rook, queen, bishop and knight endgames are separate themes.
Named mating patterns
Anastasia’s mate, the Arabian mate, smothered mate, back rank mate, Boden’s mate, the epaulette mate and more than a dozen others. Learn a pattern once and you will recognize it in your own games.
How puzzle ratings work
Every puzzle has its own rating, and so do you. A puzzle solved with no mistakes and no hints raises your rating, more so the harder it is. A wrong move or a hint lowers it. Glicko-2, as on Lichess, also tracks how certain it is of your level, so the first puzzles move your rating more. For the first five puzzles the rating is calibrating and is not shown.
Your puzzle rating and your rating in games are different scales: in a puzzle you already know a tactic exists. Puzzles train pattern recognition, which is one part of playing well.
How to improve with puzzles
- Name the idea, then check it. Before you move, say what you see: “a fork on c7”. Then check the line: is the fork safe? If you cannot name the idea, you do not see it yet.
- Go back over every failure. When a move turns out wrong, return to the position, look at the plausible replies and work out what was right.
- Pick one theme and stay with it. If you keep missing forks, open the Fork theme and solve until the pattern jumps out at you.
- Do not try moves at random. A puzzle trains calculation.
- Leave the difficulty to the rating. Training picks puzzles near your rating, which means ones you solve about half the time.
What the puzzles section has
- More than 60 themes: one of your choice or all of them mixed.
- A Glicko-2 rating that changes after every puzzle.
- No daily limit.
- Themes revealed after the solve, so the name does not give the pattern away.
- A two-step hint: first the piece lights up, then the square it goes to.
- Arrow keys ← and → step through the moves of the solution.
- The daily puzzle, a leaderboard and Woodpecker cycles on /puzzles.
- Puzzles from your own games with Pro.
How to start
- Open /puzzles. You can solve the daily puzzle without an account.
- Sign in to start training or pick a theme. A free account is enough, and it keeps your rating.
- Solve, go back over your failures, and move on to the next puzzle.
How this differs from Chess.com and Lichess puzzles
- Limit. A free Chess.com account gets three puzzles a day, according to Chess.com’s help center. There is no limit here.
- Database. The puzzles are the same as on Lichess. Here they come with Woodpecker cycles, and with Pro, puzzles from your own games.
Related
- Chess Review — find the moments in your own games where you missed a tactic.
- Free Chess Analysis — analyze a game from Chess.com, Lichess or a PGN.
- Common Chess Mistakes — recurring mistakes that cost rating points.