Chess tactics
Your opponent has just made a move. Find the reply that wins. Puzzles are drawn from near your rating, which rises when you solve one on the first try and falls when you don’t, so the difficulty keeps up with you. Pick a theme to drill one pattern.
Tap a piece, then its square · arrows and enter on a keyboard
- Rating
- 1200
- Streak
- –
- Accuracy
- –
- Solved
- –
Find the winning move
Each puzzle starts with your opponent's move. Find the reply that wins material or mates. Your first try on each one moves your rating.
Three habits that find most tactics
- 1
Checks, captures, threats
Before anything else, list every check you can give, then every capture, then every move that threatens something. Tactics live in forcing moves, because forcing moves limit what the other side can do. Most missed tactics were on that list and never looked at.
- 2
Look for what is loose
An undefended piece, or one defended only once and attacked twice, is the raw material of a fork or a skewer. So is a king with no escape square. Spot the weakness first and the move that hits it is usually easy to find.
- 3
Ask what your opponent's move changed
Every puzzle starts with your opponent's move, and that move is usually the mistake. It left a square, opened a line, or took a defender away. Work out what it stopped guarding before you search the whole board.
Puzzles from the Lichess puzzle database, released into the public domain (CC0); 396 chosen across ratings and themes. Pieces by Colin M.L. Burnett, used under the BSD licence via Wikimedia Commons.