Puzzles are the most popular way to train chess, and for good reason: tactics decide most games below master level. But "do more puzzles" is not a plan. How many, how fast and which ones matter as much as how often.
The short answer
For most club players, 15 to 30 minutes a day is enough, which means somewhere between 10 and 30 puzzles, depending on how hard they are. Doing that every day beats two hours once a week, because patterns stick through repetition over time.
What matters more than the number is how you solve them.
Solve each one fully
Speed is tempting, especially with rated puzzles, but a puzzle solved by guessing the first move teaches very little. For each one:
- look at the whole position first: whose move, what is attacked, where the kings are,
- find the full line, including the defender's best reply,
- then move.
If you get one right but are not sure why, count it as a miss and look at the solution.
Choose the right difficulty
Puzzles slightly above your level teach the most. If you solve nearly all of them instantly, they are too easy; if you rarely solve one, they are too hard and you are only guessing. Rated puzzles help here, because they adjust to you: they get harder as you improve.
Mix three kinds of puzzles
A good daily session has three parts:
- New puzzles at your level (most of the time). Mixed themes, as in a game, where nobody tells you what to look for.
- One theme (a few minutes). Forks today, pins tomorrow, back-rank mates the day after. Seeing one pattern many times in a row fixes it in memory.
- The ones you missed (a few minutes). Missed puzzles are the most valuable ones. Solving them again after a few days, and again after a week, turns a weakness into a pattern you know.
Repeat a set
Another approach many players use is to take a fixed set of puzzles and solve it several times, each round faster than the last. It is known as the Woodpecker method, after a book by Axel Smith and Hans Tikkanen. It works because the second and third time through, you are no longer calculating the pattern but recognising it, which is what happens in a real game.
Train seeing the board, too
Many tactical mistakes are not about patterns but about seeing the position: a piece you forgot was there, or a square you thought was covered. Solving some puzzles without moving the pieces, picturing the line in your head, trains this directly.
What not to do
- Do not rush to keep a streak or a rating up. A slower, correct solution is worth more.
- Do not only do puzzles. Play games, and review them; puzzles teach patterns, games teach you to use them.
- Do not skip the misses. Reading the answer and moving on wastes the best part of the puzzle.
Puzzles in GreyChess
GreyChess has rated puzzles from a bank of 33,146 positions taken from the Lichess puzzle database, in 72 themes, which you can also choose by theme. There is a Woodpecker mode for repeating a set, checkmate basics for learning the mating patterns, puzzles to solve by picturing the board, and puzzle races. The puzzles you miss become flashcards that come back until you solve them.
A steady habit is the whole secret: a short session each day, solved carefully, with the misses brought back.