An endless stream of rated chess puzzles taken from real games. In each one a single line wins. Find it and play it out, and your rating goes up or down with every puzzle.
Solve a puzzleEvery puzzle starts with your opponent's move, and it is your turn to find the best reply. Play the whole winning line, not just the first move: the opponent answers each of your moves with the strongest defense, and the puzzle is solved when the line is complete. A wrong move is taken back so you can keep looking, but the puzzle then counts as failed. Show plays the solution for you, one move per press, and that counts as failed too. Once the puzzle is over, Retry starts it again from the beginning.
Puzzles picked around your puzzle rating, which goes up or down with each one. The difficulty setting moves them up to 600 points easier or harder.
Puzzles at a rating you choose, anywhere in that range. They never change your own rating.
Moves on to a new puzzle a second after you finish one. It's on by default, and you can turn it off in the puzzle options.
The theme picker narrows the puzzles to a single idea, from 31 themes in four groups:
Mate in one, two or three, back rank mates and smothered mates.
Forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, deflection, zugzwang and more.
Opening, middlegame, and rook, pawn and queen endgames.
From one-move puzzles to lines of four moves or more.
To learn a pattern before drilling it, read its guide, or browse them all in the chess tactics guides:
For a smaller dose each day, the daily chess puzzles give you an easy, a medium and a hard puzzle, the same for everyone. The chess tactics guides cover how to train: how many puzzles to solve, and a routine that fits in ten minutes.
Yes. Every puzzle is free, with no limit on how many you solve and no account needed. Guests get a puzzle rating too.
Yes. Rated puzzles follow your puzzle rating, and the difficulty setting moves them up to 600 points below or above it. Easier puzzles gain you less rating when solved, harder ones more. In casual mode you pick the puzzle rating yourself, anywhere from 400 to 3000.
Yes. Switch to casual in the puzzle options. Casual puzzles never change your rating, so you can warm up or try puzzles far above your level without it counting.
Yes. Pick a theme in the puzzle options and every puzzle will be that motif, until you switch back to all themes. There are 31 themes, from mate in one to rook endgames.
The wrong move is taken back and you can keep trying, though the puzzle counts as failed. Show plays the solution for you, one move per press. Once the puzzle is over, Analyze opens it on the analysis board with the engine running, where you can play your move and see why it fails. Your last 12 puzzles from this visit stay in a list, so you can replay any of them.
Yes. Every day there's an easy, a medium and a hard daily chess puzzle, the same for everyone. Each difficulty has its own streak, and you can replay past puzzles from the calendar.