Your goal
Read the position and choose a strong move for the side shown above the board. Your opponent replies automatically. Keep following the idea until the puzzle is complete. A successful solution might win something, improve your position, or prevent it from getting worse.
Three kinds of decisions
Training mixes Tactical, Positional, and Critical Move puzzles. You are not told the type before you play: part of the challenge is recognizing what the position needs. The type and themes appear after you solve or reveal the puzzle.
Tactical
Recognize an opportunity and make it count. You might win material, create a decisive attack, or deliver checkmate. Follow the combination through the opponent’s replies.
Positional
Choose a useful plan and carry it out. Improving a piece, changing the pawn structure, or making a well-timed exchange can matter more than an immediate material gain. Several strong first moves may be accepted, and your chosen plan can still require precise follow-up moves.
Critical Move
Find the precise response that keeps your position from deteriorating. An ordinary-looking position can demand an exact move, even when the opponent has played well. The answer might be a retreat, a defensive resource, an exchange, or an active counterthreat. Holding your position is a successful result—you do not have to win material.
Keep playing until the critical sequence is resolved. More than one continuation may become acceptable later, even when the first move had to be precise.
Sessions mix these decisions in varying proportions. Approach each board with an open mind rather than assuming a winning tactic is waiting.
What do the themes mean?
The puzzle type describes the decision you faced. Themes describe the ideas involved, and a puzzle can have several.
Defense means meeting a threat or protecting your position. Counterplay means creating threats of your own that the opponent must address. Simplification means using exchanges to reduce pressure or reach a more manageable position. Perpetual Check means using a repeating series of checks to hold the game.
These ideas can appear across puzzle types. Use the themes after solving to reflect on why the move worked.
Read your move feedback
Look for a badge on the board and a matching label in your move history.
- Best
- An accepted solution move within 5 centipawns (0.05 pawns) of Stockfish’s best move in our depth-20 analysis. Tactical solution moves always show Best.
- Excellent
- An accepted alternative that stays close to the strongest move. Keep going!
- Good
- A reasonable alternative that does not count as an accepted solution. Try again to find the intended continuation.
- Miss
- The move gives up too much compared with the strongest continuation. Retry and look for what you missed.
- Incorrect
- The move does not solve the position, or its evaluation could not be completed. Try again.
An alternative move may take a moment to evaluate. Best and Excellent moves continue the puzzle; Good, Miss, and Incorrect moves let you retry. A move can be playable in a real game without meeting this puzzle’s goal.
Daily streaks
While signed in, solve one new tactical, positional, or critical-move puzzle each day to extend your streak. Hints and retries count; revealing, skipping, and reviewing do not.
Days run from 00:00 to 23:59 UTC. You have the entire next day after a qualifying solve to continue your streak. Miss a full day and your next solve starts a new streak; your longest streak is kept. Streak days use the server’s acceptance date, with no credit for earlier offline days.
Guest flame animations are a preview. Create an account to begin saving a streak.
Hints and retrying
Hints reveal the piece first, then the destination square, then the move. After a rejected move, retry to return to the position and choose again. Revealing the solution lets you follow the intended continuation.
Rating and EXP
Currently, only tactical puzzles affect your rating. Green and red changes show rating gains and losses.
Positional and critical-move puzzle ratings are not yet established, so you may encounter a wide range of difficulties when training these puzzles.
Critical Move puzzles award their full eligible EXP to Positional and to the Critical Moves skill. Other matching skills share a separate award of the same size. A clean solve gives 100 to each full award; an assisted solve gives 50. These skill awards do not increase the headline EXP total.
EXP tracks your training progress. Earning EXP does not necessarily mean your rating increased.
Analysis and board controls
Analyze opens position exploration. At the start of a puzzle, the left arrow lets you revisit the position before the opponent’s opening move, when available. The right arrow replays that move. During analysis, the arrows step through your explored moves; Back leaves analysis. Continue advances when available. Engine evaluations show an advantage in pawns: positive for White, negative for Black. M indicates a forced mate.
Copy FEN copies the current position. View Game opens the source game when a link is available. On mobile, swipe the move history or themes sideways to see more.
Make Good Moves