Who the Chess Trainer is for
It is meant for players who already know the rules, play online, and keep losing games in ways that feel familiar: roughly 600 to 1600 in online Rapid (Chess.com and Lichess ratings are on different scales, so treat the range as a guide).
- You lose pieces to threats you noticed one move too late.
- You find tactics in puzzles but miss them, or walk into them, in your own games.
- You are not sure what to study, because every game seems to go wrong differently.
It is not designed to teach the moves from scratch, and it is not an opening-preparation tool for strong club players.
Why random puzzles are not always enough
A puzzle tells you there is something to find. A real game does not. In your games, the hard part is often noticing that the moment matters at all: that your opponent's last move created a threat, or that a quiet trade leaves you with a lost ending.
Random puzzle sets also spread your time evenly over patterns you may already handle well. If most of your lost games come from one or two habits, a short session aimed at those habits spends the same fifteen minutes on what actually costs you games. Puzzles stay useful for pattern recognition; the Trainer is meant to decide which ones you see. For the basic patterns themselves, see our guide to chess tactics for beginners.
How it is meant to work
This describes the design we are building. Details may change during the beta.
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Bring your games
Import games as PGN files, the standard chess game format that Chess.com and Lichess both let you export. Direct account connections will only be offered where each platform's terms allow it.
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Engine-assisted review
A chess engine checks the positions from your games and flags the moves where your position got clearly worse. Each one is then sorted by what went wrong: a missed threat, a missed tactic, an unsafe king, a trade into a worse ending, or a rushed move.
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Three weaknesses, with evidence
The app picks the three patterns that cost you the most across many games, not one bad loss, and shows you the positions behind each one.
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15 minutes a day, then re-check
Short daily sessions built from those patterns, followed by a fresh look at your new games to see whether the same mistakes still appear.
How the three weaknesses will be chosen
A pattern only becomes a "weakness" when there is enough evidence for it. The plan is to rank each mistake type by three things:
- How often it happens, relative to how often the situation came up in your games.
- How much it costs: how far the evaluation dropped, and whether it decided the game.
- How trainable it is in short exercises. Spotting a hanging piece is; a whole opening repertoire is not.
You will see the actual positions behind each pick, so you can judge for yourself whether it matches how you play. With only a handful of games, the app is designed to ask for more rather than guess.
What a 15-minute session could look like
An example for a player whose three weaknesses are missed threats, short tactical calculation and careless trades:
| Minutes | Focus | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 0–5 | Missed threats | Positions from your own games: name what your opponent's last move threatened before choosing a move. |
| 5–10 | Short calculation | New positions with the same motif, mixed with some where there is no tactic and the right answer is a calm move. |
| 10–14 | Trades | Decide whether to exchange or keep the pieces, then see how the resulting position turns out. |
| 14–15 | Review | Retry one position you missed earlier in the week, and keep one sentence to remember. |
Mixing in positions without a winning tactic matters: in a real game nobody tells you a combination exists.
How progress will be tracked
Rating moves slowly and is noisy, so it is not the main measure. Instead the app is designed to track, for each of your three weaknesses:
- how often you solve its exercises correctly, and how quickly, over the weeks;
- how often the same mistake still shows up in your new games, per game played;
- when a weakness has faded enough to be replaced by the next one on your list.
We are not promising a rating gain. The aim is that you can see, in your own games, whether a specific habit is changing.
What you get by joining the waitlist
- An email when beta testing opens, so you can try the early Android version.
- Occasional development updates about the Chess Trainer, not newsletters about our books.
- A say in what gets built: beta testers' feedback will shape the first release.
- No cost and no commitment. It is not a pre-order, and every email has an unsubscribe link.
Questions about the beta
Is the app available now?
No. The Chess Trainer is in development and there is nothing to download yet. The waitlist is how we will tell you when the beta opens.
Will it work with Chess.com or Lichess?
You will be able to import games as PGN files, which both sites let you export. Any direct account connection depends on each platform's terms and permissions, and will be added only where those allow it.
Will it cost money?
Pricing has not been decided. Joining the waitlist is free and does not commit you to buying anything.
Will it raise my rating?
We cannot promise that. The Trainer is meant to show you which mistakes you repeat and give you focused practice on them; how your rating responds depends on many games and many other things.
Is there an iPhone version?
Not at first. The beta is planned for Android only.
Be first to try it
Join the waitlist and we will email you when the Android beta opens.
Separate from our book-bonus emails. Privacy policy.
Start before the app exists
The core habit needs no app: after a game, review it yourself before turning on the engine, note the moments you were unsure, and write down one mistake you can recognize next time. Our step-by-step guide, how to analyze your chess games, walks through a 15-minute review with worked examples.