Questions

The board freezes. Their moves arrive as arrows, and you play the whole line from the position in your head.

No. Connect one for a free report on your games and lessons in the openings you play.

Any. Puzzles and lessons follow your rating and how many moves ahead you can already see.

Peek AI explains every move in plain words. Its facts come from Stockfish and Maia, and it is checked against them.

Yes, for iPhone and Android. Puzzles, drills and your lesson work offline in it.

Build one habit: before every move, ask what checks, captures and threats each side has, and make sure you have an answer to each. Start with your opponent's last move: what does it attack, and what did it stop defending? Peekchess trains this with threat puzzles, where you play the attack your opponent is about to make.

Look at what your games are lost to. In our count of 63,109 rapid and classical Lichess games, 60 of every 100 losses came from a tactic and 7 from the opening. Most of those tactics were one or two moves deep: the loser wasn't out-calculated, they missed the reply. So train spotting tactics before openings.

Because a puzzle tells you there's something to find, and your opponent won't. Most puzzle sites also move the pieces as you solve, so you can go one move at a time. In a game the board doesn't move until you do, so you need the whole line in your head before you play. Train your calculation that way.

Yes. Most games are lost to a blunder: in our count of 63,109 rapid and classical Lichess games, 60 of every 100 losses came from a tactic, and 73% of those tactics were only one or two moves deep. Short blunders like these are what a habit catches: before every move, check your opponent's checks, captures and threats.

There's no fixed number. Calculation follows the forcing moves, checks, captures and threats, until the position is quiet enough to judge. Seeing short lines fully matters more than depth: in our count of lost games, 73% of the game-losing tactics were only one or two moves deep. Those are the lines to get right first.

Train the four steps a game asks for. 1. Spot the moment that needs calculation. 2. List the forcing moves: checks, captures and threats. 3. Play each line out in your head without moving a piece. 4. Judge where it ends. Puzzles help most when the board stays still while you calculate, as it does in a game.

Practise holding the board in your head while you look at it. Peekchess has drills for it: Keeping track, Coordinates, Square colours and Knight checks. Then use it in puzzles, where the board freezes, the moves land as arrows, and you play the whole line over the position you can see. That's the visualization a game asks for.

Less than it looks. Blindfold chess trains remembering a whole position with nothing to look at. In a game the board is in front of you, and the skill is moving the pieces in your head over the position you can see. Train that kind of visualization and calculation instead, with the real board in view.

Fewer, done properly. Ten puzzles solved fully in your head beat fifty guessed until a move works. Before you move anything, say the whole line to yourself: your move, their reply, your next move, to the end. If the board then differs from the line in your head, count it as a miss, even if your first move was right.