Learn chess

Trainers

• ♞ Rated puzzles Puzzles picked for your level; your rating follows every result.
• ♝ Puzzle themes Forks, pins, mates in two: practise one idea at a time.
• ♜ Puzzle Streak Ever harder puzzles until the first mistake.
• ♛ Puzzle Storm As many as you can in three minutes.
• ♙ Opening drills Play the book moves of an opening until they are second nature.
• ♚ Guess the move Replay classic games and find the moves the masters played.
• ♖ Calculation See the whole line in your head before you write it down.
• ♘ Blindfold Find the winning move from a list of pieces, board hidden.
• ♔ Your mistakes Positions from your own games where a better move was there.

The basics

1. How the pieces move

   Each piece moves in its own way. Collect the stars to learn the rook, bishop, queen, king, knight and pawn.

   1. The rook
   2. The bishop
   3. The queen
   4. The king
   5. The knight
   6. The pawn

2. Capturing

   A piece captures by moving onto an enemy piece. Learn to take what is free and to leave protected pieces alone.

   1. Capture the pieces
   2. Protected pieces

3. Check

   A king that is attacked is in check, and the player must get out of it at once: move the king, capture the attacker, or block.

   1. Give check
   2. Getting out of check

4. Checkmate

   Checkmate is a check the king cannot escape. It ends the game: the side that mates wins.

   1. Checkmate in one

5. Stalemate

   If the side to move has no legal move but is not in check, the game is a draw: stalemate. Do not throw a win away.

   1. Avoid stalemate

6. Special moves

   Three moves follow their own rules: castling, en passant and promotion.

   1. Castling
   2. En passant
   3. Promotion

7. Piece values

   Pieces are worth different amounts: pawn 1, knight 3, bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9. Take the most valuable thing you safely can.

   1. Which capture?

8. Basic checkmates

   With a queen or a rook and your king you can always mate a lone king. The engine defends as well as it can.

   1. Mate with the queen
   2. Mate with the rook
   3. The ladder mate

9. Mating patterns

   Mates come in recognisable shapes. Know the patterns and you will spot them in your games.

   1. Smothered mate
   2. Anastasia's mate
   3. The Arabian mate
   4. Boden's mate
   5. Légal's mate

10. Opening principles

    Five rules make a good opening: take the centre, develop knights and bishops, keep the queen home, move each piece once, castle.

    1. Ten good moves

Going further

1. Tactical motifs

   Forks, pins, skewers and discovered attacks win material. Learn each motif, then drill it in the puzzles.

   1. The fork
   2. The pin
   3. The skewer
   4. Discovered attack
   5. Double check

2. Endgames

   Few pieces, exact play. The opposition, the Lucena and Philidor positions are the foundations of every endgame.

   1. The opposition
   2. The Lucena position
   3. The Philidor position