The tactics trainer
Your puzzle rating goes up. Your games don't.
Because nobody announces “fork” in a real game. chesstactics teaches each motif on a path, makes you find it with the theme hidden, then reads your own games and shows you the tactics you walked past, named, replayable, until they are yours.
Lichess or Chess.com username. No card. Twenty games on the free tier.
Learn
One path per motif
A lesson that plays itself, a drill with the theme announced, then a test with it hidden and mixed with the motifs you already know.
Gym
A rating you can trust
Puzzles at your level, theme hidden, verified move by move on the server. One attempt counts. Every motif you fail is recorded.
Scan
The tactics you missed
Every hero move of your last games, checked by the engine. Where you had a fork and played something else, it becomes a puzzle from your own game.
Sprint
Speed, three strikes
Puzzle-rush style: the ladder climbs, three misses and it stops. The reflex that transfers to blitz.
The motifs
40 tactical ideas, 1 journey written, every one served in the gym and named in your scan.
Fork
One piece attacks two targets at once, and only one can be saved.
Journey readyPin
A piece cannot move (or should not) because a more valuable piece sits behind it on the line.
Skewer
A line attack on a valuable piece that, when it moves, exposes a piece behind it.
Discovered attack
A piece moves out of the way and reveals an attack from the piece behind it, so two threats land at once.
Back rank mate
A rook or queen mates a king trapped behind its own unmoved pawns.
Smothered mate
A knight delivers mate to a king boxed in by its own pieces.
Deflection
Force a piece away from the duty it was performing, and the thing it guarded falls.
Removing the defender
Capture the piece that guards the target, then take the target.
Why Lichess is not enough
Five million free puzzles, a rating, a dashboard by theme: Lichess is superb, and it is where our puzzles come from. What it cannot do is tell you which motifs you miss in your games, put them on a path, and hand them back to you a day later. That is the whole product. The gym stays generous so you never have to leave for a rating.
Start free