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About this tool
Sharpen your tactical skills with curated chess puzzles — forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, checkmates and endgames across multiple difficulty levels.
This trainer sets you 18 hand-built tactical positions, three each of forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, checkmates and endgames, and asks you to find the one winning move from a real FEN position. You get three attempts per puzzle, a hint that highlights the key square, and a written explanation of why the move works once you solve it or run out of tries. A local scoreboard tracks solved count, current and best streak and total points, awarding 10 for easy, 20 for medium and 30 for hard.
Open Chess Puzzle Trainer on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Pick a motif in the Filter row — Forks, Pins, Skewers, Discovered, Checkmates or Endgames — and a difficulty of Easy, Medium or Hard. The first matching puzzle is already on the board and the clock is running, so there is no start button.
White is to move. Click a white piece and then its destination square; the badge above the board shows the puzzle's difficulty and motif, and the counter beside it your place in the filtered set — 1 / 18 with the filters left on All. Hint pulses the square the right piece stands on for two seconds, and Give Up plays the solution out instead.
A correct move ends the puzzle with Solved! +10 pts on Easy, +20 on Medium or +30 on Hard, above the explanation of the tactic; three wrong moves give Failed — 3 wrong attempts and a Show Solution link. Retry restores the starting position, Next Puzzle moves on, and the Stats card holds Solved, Total Attempts, Streak, Best Streak and Total Score in your browser.
Solving reveals a written reason — which two pieces the fork hits, which piece defends the sacrifice — instead of just a green tick.
Pick a single tactic such as skewers or discovered attacks, and narrow to easy, medium or hard, so you can drill one weakness at a time.
Solved count, attempts, streak, best streak and score are stored in your browser's local storage, so there is no account and no sync.
Eighteen positions across six motifs: forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, checkmates and endgames, with three of each. They are split evenly by difficulty too, six easy, six medium and six hard.
You get three attempts. The first two wrong moves just reset your selection so you can try again; on the third the puzzle is marked failed, your streak drops to zero, and the solution becomes available to play through.
Solving a puzzle adds 10 points for easy, 20 for medium and 30 for hard, and increments your streak. Failed puzzles count towards attempts but add no points and reset the current streak, while your best streak is kept.
It is which piece stands in front. In a pin, a less valuable piece is stuck in front of a more valuable one — often the king — and cannot move; in a skewer the valuable piece is attacked first and, when it moves away, the piece behind it is captured. Both are line tactics played by rooks, bishops and queens.