Daily Chess Puzzle
A new chess puzzle every day, right here. Find the best move, then the next one, until the combination is done. Stuck? Ask for a hint or see the solution.
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Every day at midnight UTC a new chess puzzle appears above: a position from a real game where one side has a winning sequence. It is your move. Find the strongest one, and the board plays your opponent's best reply, until the combination is complete. Any checkmate counts as a solution.
The difficulty follows the week: easy on Monday, Tuesday and Friday, medium on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, and a hard puzzle on Sunday. Each one shows its rating, so you can see how tough it is. Solved today's and want more? SuperChess has more chess puzzles, with streaks and leaderboards.
Why Solve Chess Puzzles?
Solving chess puzzles is widely considered one of the fastest and most efficient ways to improve your chess rating. Here are the main benefits of daily tactical training:
- Pattern Recognition: By seeing the same tactical ideas repeatedly, your brain learns to spot them instantly in real games.
- Improved Calculation: Puzzles force you to visualize the board several moves ahead without moving the pieces.
- Tactical Awareness: You become more alert to hidden opportunities and blunders, both for yourself and your opponent.
- Finding Winning Moves: You practice the essential skill of evaluating different candidate moves and selecting the strongest one.
- Better Decision-Making: You learn when to attack, when to defend, and how to create forcing sequences.
Common Chess Tactics
To successfully solve daily chess puzzles, you need to be familiar with fundamental tactical motifs. Here are the most common ones you'll encounter:
- Fork: A move where one piece attacks two or more of the opponent's pieces simultaneously, often guaranteeing material gain.
- Pin: An attack on a piece that cannot move without exposing a more valuable piece behind it.
- Skewer: The reverse of a pin. An attack on a valuable piece that must move out of the way, exposing a less valuable piece behind it to capture.
- Discovered Attack: Moving one piece to reveal a hidden attack from another piece, often catching the opponent off guard.
- Double Attack: A variation of the discovered attack where both the piece that moved and the revealed piece are attacking different targets (especially dangerous when one is a check).
- Back-Rank Checkmate: Delivering checkmate with a rook or queen on the opponent's back rank because their king is trapped behind its own pawns.
- Deflection: Forcing a key defending piece to move away from the square or piece it was protecting.
How to Solve a Chess Puzzle
When you are faced with a complex position, knowing where to start can be the hardest part. Follow this structured thought process to find the best move:
- Look at all checks first: Checks are the most forcing moves in chess. Your opponent is forced to respond immediately. Always evaluate checks, even if they look like a sacrifice.
- Look for captures: If there are no good checks, look for pieces you can capture. Does capturing a piece lead to an advantage?
- Look for threats: Can you create an immediate, unanswerable threat (like threatening checkmate on the next move)?
- Consider forcing moves: Focus your calculation on moves that drastically limit your opponent's choices.
- Calculate the opponent's best response: Don't just hope your opponent makes a mistake. Always ask yourself what their strongest defense would be.
- Choose the strongest continuation: Follow the lines through to the end and pick the move that results in the clearest advantage or checkmate.
Daily Chess Training
When it comes to improving at chess tactics, consistency is far more important than volume. Solving just one or two challenging puzzles every day will yield better long-term results than doing a hundred simple puzzles once a month.
Making the daily chess puzzle part of your routine keeps your brain engaged and your calculation skills sharp. Over time, finding the best move will become second nature, and you will start seeing these tactical patterns appear in your own online and over-the-board games.
Frequently Asked Questions
A daily chess puzzle is one position from a real game, picked for each day, where one side has a winning sequence: checkmate, or winning material. Here a new one appears at midnight UTC, and you solve it right on this page.
Solving chess puzzles regularly improves your pattern recognition, tactical awareness, and calculation skills. This translates to making fewer blunders and spotting winning opportunities in your own games.
Yes! Chess puzzles are one of the best ways for beginners to improve. They teach you common tactical motifs like forks and pins, helping you recognize them during real games.
To solve a puzzle, first look for checks, then captures, then threats. These forcing moves give your opponent fewer options. Calculate their best responses and look for the strongest continuation.
The most common chess tactics include forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, and double attacks. Mastering these basic patterns will help you solve more complex puzzles.
Yes. The daily chess puzzle is completely free.
No. You solve it right on this page with no account and no download, and it keeps working offline once the page has loaded.
Every day at midnight UTC. The difficulty follows the week: easy on Monday, Tuesday and Friday, medium on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, and hard on Sunday.
They come from the Lichess open puzzle database, which is free for anyone to use. Every puzzle is taken from a real game and rated by the players who have solved it.
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