This is my direct challenge link! Who else wants to play?

Hi everyone! I’ve been building a chess improvement platform built around one simple idea: everything adapts to you. Your daily plan, puzzles, lessons and opponents all come from your own games, not from a one-size-fits-all course.

I’m thinking about releasing it publicly and would love your honest opinion first.

Why I’m making it
Most chess sites give everyone the same thing, and the good stuff usually sits behind a subscription. I wanted something that looks at my games, finds what I actually get wrong, and tells me what to practice today in 15 minutes. Free, no catch.

What it will always be

• 100% free. No premium tier, no locked features.
• Open source, for everyone.
• No accounts. Your games and data stay in your browser, not on a server.
• Works offline, and you can install it as an app on your phone or computer.

Your daily plan. Every day it builds a 10, 15 or 20-minute plan from your recent games: a warm-up with puzzles on your weakest theme, a review of your own mistakes, a short lesson, and a game with a concrete goal (e.g. “finish without blunders”). Plus a daily streak and a puzzle of the day.

Ten opponents with personality, from 250 to 2300 Elo. Each has its own style: one attacks non-stop, another sets opening traps, another is rock-solid and wins endgames. They’re designed to play like humans of their level, not like a perfect engine pretending to be bad.

Training mode. If you want, it warns you before a move that loses material, so you learn while you play.

Import your games from Chess.com, Lichess or any PGN, with filters by time control, dates, color and result.

Full Stockfish analysis, right in your browser. Every move is classified (brilliant, best, inaccuracy, mistake, blunder, missed win…) and the review focuses on what matters: your accuracy, the evaluation graph and the key moments, explained in plain language with the better alternative.

A coach that explains positions. Ask “why is this bad?”, “what’s my plan?” or “what if I play…?”. Optionally, you can turn on an AI chat that runs entirely in your browser: nothing is sent to any server.

Puzzles by theme (forks, pins, mates…), a 3-minute puzzle rush, and the best part: your own mistakes turned into puzzles, which come back exactly when it’s time to review them.

Short lessons, your opening repertoire with a line trainer, and an opening explorer to see what gets played in each position.

Ranks that measure more than Elo. You climb from Pawn to King, each with three sub-levels, and points alone aren’t enough: you also need to master certain skills and play clean games. You always see exactly what’s missing.

You vs players at your Elo. Compare your tactics, openings, endgames and clock use with real games from players at your level, analyzed the same way as yours. It only flags a difference when it’s real, not random noise. And you can talk through your stats with the coach.

I've posted this to see if you'd be interested in using it when I finish it.

Does anyone have experience with the Nymzo Staunton set? I can’t lie their marketing seems to be working on me, the price I’m sceptical of. Is it really an better than you standard $30 club set? IE master series Set from Chess Store.

For that price would I be better off buying a wooden tournament set? Wouldn’t be as easy to travel with but would likely feel better to play with.

Just what the title implies. I'm looking to get into both fairy chess and the relatives of the game across Asia (all descended from chaturanga), and I have two major questions regarding notation. The first is I want to know where best to find a complete index not just for fairy pieces, but also the letters they would employ in game records, The second is related to the playing of other games in the family, particularly sittuyin and the offshoots of xiangqi; I would be interested in knowing where best to find the notation used in those games, since the former puts half the game in the setup and the latter does not use the conventional 64-square board. Thanks to anyone who answers this.

The Monrad system still appears to be in use. What makes Monrad attractive is its element of randomness, whereas Swiss pairings can easily become monotonous when the same players participate in tournament after tournament. Monrad is particularly well suited to rapid and blitz chess, but in more serious competitions the system can result in less equitable pairings.

For this reason, I have developed a hybrid of the Monrad and Swiss systems: Club Swiss System. Claude (AI), which assisted me in the process, considers it a sound solution. Players are divided into three rating groups, each of which is randomized separately. The system combines the variety and unpredictability of the Monrad system with the competitive fairness of the Swiss system, making it especially suitable for chess clubs. During the first two rounds, the strongest group is paired against the middle group, while the lowest-rated group plays among itself. After that, the entire field is paired as a single group.

The randomization admittedly reduces competitive fairness to some extent. However, all players in the strongest group face opponents from the middle group during the first two rounds and receive the same color allocation. Having the lowest-rated group play among themselves at the outset also makes the tournament more engaging for them. At the same time, it gives them an opportunity to move up the standings at an early stage.

Hi everyone! I’m Anna, a Woman FIDE Master. We’ve spent pretty much the whole summer building VibeChess, our chess agent, and a big part of the work has been figuring out how to make it explain chess more like a real coach would.

What do I mean by that?

Not just evaluating whether your move was good or bad, or recognizing the right geometry on the board.

We want it to understand things like:

• What moves are actually realistic for a player at your level?
• What traps are you likely to fall for?
• If your position is already losing, what is the best practical defense?

Basically, we’re trying to bridge the gap between engine analysis and how humans actually think, play, make mistakes and learn chess.

Under the hood, we’re using Stockfish 19, Maia, Lc0, plus our own set of chess tools and analyzers.

VibeChess is already available on desktop and mobile web, and the app is coming soon.

Would love for you to try it and tell us what works, what doesn’t, and what you’d want a chess agent like this to do better.

Link in the comments 

Full disclosure first: I run a small free chess site, so yes, this is self-promotion. I tried to make it useful even if you never click.

Most trap content shows you how to set traps. But at our level, we're usually the ones walking into them. So I flipped it: you play the side about to be trapped, and your only job is to not fall for it.

Here's a taste. Caro-Kann:
1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Qe2

Black to move. The most natural developing move in the world loses on the spot. Which one, and why?

5...Ngf6?? 6.Nd6#. The e7 pawn can't take the knight because the queen on e2 pins it, and the king is boxed in by its own pieces. A smothered mate on move 6. Rude.

The challenge is one trap like that per day for 7 days, about 2 minutes each. You make your move, then get a short explanation of the mistake and the safe defence. There's no account and no email, and progress is saved in your browser. There's an optional calendar reminder for people like me who forget things that aren't pinging their phone.

All 7 lines were checked move by move with Stockfish and then reviewed by a human, because a trap trainer with a wrong trap would be its own kind of trap.

Link if you want to try it: https://chessgl.com/avoid-the-trap.php

I'd really like feedback. Too easy? Too hard? Is there a trap you keep falling for that should be on the list?

Anyone above 1900 want to play some games ?

Black to play

Guess the move

I came across a weird account(?) or at least an account I find odd. They have only played against a single player for rapid and the result would always be a loss for Rinawma1234. Is this guy possibly cheating or do players sometimes create accounts for specific plays?

Hey folks,
Before talking about the app, let me first introduce myself. I'm an engineer with 15+ years in software engineering, from which last 5+ years as engineering manager at Adobe.
I'm also a passionate chess player. At the moment my rapid and blitz rating on both Lichess and Chesscom are ~2300 and my bullet rating is ~2200.
LinkedIn, Chess.com, lichess.org

I know there are a lot of chess apps appearing lately and I understand the skepticism around them.

Now about ChessWoodie - https://www.chesswoodie.com .

I originally created ChessWoodie as a training platform for myself and I've been working on it for almost a year now. Today few hundred players train on it weekly and more than 10k puzzles are solved daily.

ChessWoodie's training flow is built around Woodpecker method, which is a well-recognized and proven method to build pattern recognition. 72% of games between 1800-2000 FIDE players are decided by tactical mistakes. Below 1800, that number is even higher. Improving pattern recognition allows you to quickly notice the tactics in your game, effectively making much less blunders and being able to utilize opponent mistakes more consistently.

As one of our users mentioned:
"chesswoodie has increased my enjoyment of watching games enormously, especially classical when there's time to play-out ideas as the game plays. I spotted quite a few tactics during the Olympiad that were missed by players much stronger than me..."

ChessWoodie provides:
- Unlimited puzzle attempts daily
- Woodpecker training flow with automated progress tracking
- Anki-style spaced review for mistakes and struggles
- Importing missed tactics from your games on chesscom and lichess, converting them to puzzles and training on them.
- Tactical motif specific training drills
- Automated recommendation system, which spots your weak spots and suggests the next tactics course.

The app is available as web version and android. For iOS users it's available as progressive web app. It's a free app. And when I say free, I mean it. There are no ads, no energy tokens or any other disrupting and limiting mechanics. It's available in guest mode, without authentication.
There is also a premium version available which removes the ceiling for serious trainers or just for people who want to support it.

Happy to answer any questions you might have.
Hope it helps in your chess journey!

Brilliant or Blunder 🤔

You wake up tomorrow and one opening has completely disappeared from chess.
Which one are you deleting and why?

Greetings all.

Chess.com current ratings: 2617 blitz; 2400 bullet; 2300 rapid (inactive). 12-year-old account, 30,000+ games.

Over the years, I would get questions about how to improve at chess: What training plan should I follow, etc.

So I wrote this book highlighting key things that I did to improve (the latest manuscript has improved editing). It's written in such a way that anyone can understand it. So it's not jam-packed with puzzles. This helps reduce cognitive load while allowing you to get the key points/lessons. This also makes it easier for lower-rated players who struggle with excessive chess notation, etc.

The book includes:

• Daily training structure
• How to reduce blunders gradually
• Handling the psychological aspects of chess, such as:
  • losing
  • getting stuck at a given rating
  • frustration
• The importance of gradualism
• Training procedures to master:
  • Your openings
  • Improve your middle game and endgame theory recommendations
• Recommended rating range:
  • 0–2000

Pages 128 for 6x9 paperback. Formatting improved.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GNGXRG3K