Best Chess Websites For Puzzles

Best Chess Websites
Updated: Feb, 2024
6 mins read

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One of the best ways to improve your chess play is by solving puzzles and getting familiar with various chess motifs.

It’s only ideal that such a proven and trusted way to train one’s chess calculation skills became a habit for an average chess improver.

There are a lot of chess resources available on the internet. Chess-solving websites are no exceptions.

So, ranging from free, open-source platforms to paid options, this article will delve into the best chess websites for puzzles.

Let’s get into it.

Chess Tempo

Chess Tempo.com is one of the best tactics and puzzles-solving sites available.

Chess Tempo has been around for a while, reworking and improving its services.

Even though Chess Tempo is more than just a puzzle website, It’s best appreciated when used as a puzzle-solving and learning website.

Puzzle features

On Chess Tempo, there is the option to choose between solving a standard chess tactic, an interesting guess of the move, or reviewing tactical and positional motifs.

You can also search for puzzles based on the type of rating points assigned to the particular puzzle.

Chess Tempo has other handy features like.

Chess books: You can access various chess books (tactical or otherwise) on Chess Tempo. This feature provides an opportunity to learn more about chess.
Training target: This Chess Tempo feature allows the user to set a puzzle training goal based on several preferences like the type of puzzles or the period of training.
Tactical and positional motifs: On Chess Tempo, you can look at most of the known chess tactical motifs to understand them and apply them in your game. Aside from that, they also provide the option to learn common positional motifs found in chess play.

My favorite feature of Chess Tempo is their ‘Guess the Move feature’. This feature allows you to guess a move based on GM games and provides the correct solution to the position given.

With Chess Tempo, your puzzle-solving never gets boring as it provides a good range of puzzle options.

ChessPuzzle.net

ChessPuzzle.net is a necessary addition to this list because ChessPuzzle is relatively newer than the others.

It is also one of the few websites featured here created solely for chess puzzles.

Their standout elements are the simplicity of their website and the ingenuity of the puzzle features provided.

Apart from the typical puzzle-solving features, here is what you can expect from the ChessPuzzle website:

Puzzle Inceptions: stimulates an actual chess game where one has to evaluate position and decide if White or Black is better and by how many points.

It’s similar to a standard chess game where you don’t know beforehand whether a tactic is present in a position making this feature a more realistic approach to puzzle solving.

After evaluation, one is presented with a puzzle to solve if that position has a tactic. Interesting right?

Puzzle climb: a twist to chess puzzles where you have three lives to start. You then solve a series of puzzles and lose lives with each miss. The aim is to accumulate as many scores as possible until no lives are left.
Puzzle Filter: Here, you can select the type of puzzle you want to attempt based on motif, opening, rating, and tasks.

ChessBase

ChessBase is a popular website with long-term chess players. The puzzle-solving feature is one of the services provided by the ChessBase team.

Compared to the other products from ChessBase, it’s also free to use.

Puzzle Features

Standard untimed puzzle solving
Puzzle fight with other players
Tactical Sprint against the clock.

ChessBase does not offer groundbreaking features that the other chess puzzle websites have. However, it’s still a popular and handy chess puzzle website.

Lichess.org

Lichess is one of the most popular chess websites for good reasons. Apart from being a chess-playing website, Lichess offers one of the best chess puzzles features.

Lichess is an open-sourced website. This means you don’t have to worry about payment or paywalls in the future.

Puzzle Features

The puzzle features offered by Lichess include:

Puzzle Streak: This feature allows you to solve chess puzzles while building a streak as the puzzles progressively get difficult with each successful solution. The streak ends with an incorrect solution to a puzzle.
Puzzle Storm: In Lichess Puzzle Storm, the goal is to solve as many possible puzzles within three minutes. Each correct solution accumulates more combos. This combo gives more scores as you solve more puzzles correctly. Puzzle storm is one of the most enjoyable solving formats on Lichess.
Puzzle Racers: You won’t be alone if this reminds you of the puzzle battle feature on Chess.com as they are very similar. However, Lichess has racing cars as an enjoyable addition. The more and faster you solve correctly, the more your race car speeds up compared to your opponent’s.
Puzzle Dashboard: This feature is handy when you want to take a bird’s eye view of how well your puzzle-solving prowess is faring. You can then see your area of puzzle-solving strength and even those needing improvements. Puzzle Dashboard is a handy feature for anyone serious about solving chess puzzles.

Chess.com

Chess.com provides a very comprehensive approach to puzzle solving and learning.

Both learning and tactical practices are adequately covered on the chess.com platform. There are tons of tutorials in their learning library.

With videos from top players explaining these tactical motifs and ideas, it is a no-brainer why Chess.com remains the most visited chess website today.

Puzzle features

Standard and Custom Puzzle Solving: On chess.com, you can solve puzzles as you typically would or choose to solve puzzles based on a particular theme and rating range. It helps to consolidate various ideas and tactical motifs.
Puzzle Rush: Puzzle Rush is a timed puzzle-solving format where you try to solve as many puzzles as possible within a time limit (either 3 minutes or 5 minutes)
Puzzle Battle: Here, you can compete against other players while ensuring you don’t lose to the three strikes from wrong moves. The person with the highest score after the time limit wins the battle.
Puzzle tournaments: Chess.com is the only chess website that hosts an actual tournament experience centered around puzzles. These huge events like the yearly Puzzle Championship are usually prized tournaments, allowing you to display your puzzle-solving skills in a tournament format.

It’s important to note that most of the chess.com puzzle features are premium features. However, you can try them out for a short time (trial period) if you want.

StepChess.com

StepChess is very similar to ChessPuzzle.net. Both in the simplicity of design and the focus on puzzles.

StepChess however is different in how the website is structured. This unique design allows a more structured learning approach to puzzles and chess when compared to other puzzle websites on this list.

Puzzle Features

Online coaching features: This allows the chess coach or tutor to create quizzes and puzzles for students. It also provides the feature to host classes.
Puzzle training: StepChess has a timed puzzle option(three or five minutes). There is also a survival mode available which is not timed.
Puzzle tournaments: StepChess allows users to host puzzle tournaments for multiple players to join. It’s very intuitive to use and straightforward. Very few websites have these capabilities.
Puzzle League: This allows members to join leagues where they compete against each other.
StepChess allows users to create a collection of puzzles for others and themselves.

StepChess is different from the other chess websites because it gives the luxury of a customized experience with friends.

Also, it’s possible to use the platform as a teaching website for puzzles and other chess aspects.

Chessable.com

Chessable is a chess learning website and it also serves as a chess puzzle learning website.

The focus of Chessable is more on learning by dedicated practice.

Chessable has various courses on puzzles you can choose to solve and learn from.

Puzzle features

Courses: There are tons of tactics courses on Chessable to choose from and this helps with learning certain themes or topics based on the course selected.
Consistent Review: Chessable move-trainer feature ensures that the user has adequately learned a concept by allowing users to review or restudy them at intervals.