Chess puzzles every day: how many, and how to solve them
Our advice for most club players: a few puzzles every day, solved properly, rather than a long session once a week. Here is a routine to start from: how much time to give it, how many puzzles at your level, and what to do with the ones you get wrong.
The short answer
Fifteen to thirty minutes a day is a good starting point for most club players. The number of puzzles matters less than the way you solve them: two puzzles worked out to the end, with the line written down and then checked, are worth more than twenty played on instinct. Choose a number you can keep every day, and keep it. Two a day is the pace of our monthly notebooks: sixty puzzles a month, at one level.
Why every day rather than once a week
A long session on Sunday feels productive, but by the fortieth puzzle most people are tired and start to guess. A few puzzles a day keep your attention high, bring each pattern back every day instead of once a week, and fit into a normal day, at breakfast or on the train.
A fixed number helps too. “Two puzzles a day” is a decision you make once; “when I have time” is a decision you have to make again every day. If you miss a day, do not double the next one: simply carry on.
How many puzzles a day at your level
The right number depends on how long each puzzle takes you, and that depends on your level. As a starting point, with the three levels of our notebooks:
- Beginner, 600 to 1000 Elo: two to five short puzzles. Start with mates in one and pieces left unprotected, then simple forks: the aim is to see the shape quickly, so a few extra easy ones do no harm.
- Intermediate, 1000 to 1400 Elo: two to four puzzles of two or three moves. Write down your opponent’s best reply before your second move.
- Advanced, 1400 to 1800 Elo: one to three harder puzzles, with real time for each. A difficult one can take ten minutes, and that is time well spent.
These are not rules. If you are still fresh, do one more; if your attention drops, stop. The last puzzle of the day deserves the same care as the first.
Quality over quantity
Solve each puzzle as you would choose a move in a game: without touching the pieces, and without guessing. Look at the forcing moves first, the checks, captures and threats. Then calculate your opponent’s best reply, not the one you hope for. Only when you have the whole line do you look at the answer.
Do not chase speed at first. A puzzle solved slowly but properly trains the habit you need at the board; a puzzle guessed right teaches you very little.
Write the line down
Writing the line forces you to finish it. In this position, the pawn on b2 is one step from promoting, and 1…b1=Q? is the move that jumps out. Write it with White’s reply and the problem appears: 2.Rxb1 takes the new queen, and White is winning.
The solution is 1…Ra1!: the rook offers itself and attacks the rook on d1, which guards b1. After 2.Rxa1 bxa1=Q, the pawn takes the rook and becomes a queen. In your head, it is easy to stop one move too early; on paper, the missing reply shows.
Write your opponent’s reply in every line. If it is missing, the line is not finished.
Review your mistakes
A missed puzzle is the most useful one of the day. Do not just read the solution: find the exact move where your line went wrong. It may be a check you did not see, a defence you forgot, or a capture you thought impossible. Note it in a few words beside the diagram.
Then mark the puzzle and solve it again a week later, without looking at your notes. If you find it, you have learned something. If not, it goes back on the list for the next week.
Themes first, then mixed sets
To learn a new pattern, solve several puzzles on the same theme in a row: ten forks, then ten pins. The shape is still in your mind when you reach the next one, and you start to recognise it. 300 Chess Puzzles is built that way: ten themes of thirty puzzles, each opening with a short lesson, easiest first.
In a game, though, nobody tells you there is a fork. Once a theme feels easy, mix the themes, so that each puzzle could be anything and you have to find the idea yourself. With a book sorted by theme, solve the first puzzle of each theme, then the second, and so on.
A routine for the week
- Every day: fifteen to thirty minutes, a few new puzzles at your level, the whole line written before you check.
- After each puzzle: if you were wrong, find the move you missed and note it beside the diagram.
- Once a week: solve the missed puzzles again, without your notes.
- When a theme feels easy: move on to mixed sets.
Paper helps with all of this: there is nothing to click, so you have to finish the line, and your notes stay next to the diagram. Our article on chess puzzles on paper explains how to set it up, and the one on chess rating levels explains why your puzzle rating and your game rating are not the same thing. Puzzles are only one part of improving: if your rating has stopped moving, our article on what to do when you are stuck looks at the other habits to change.
If you would rather not choose the puzzles yourself, each Knight’s Notebook brings sixty puzzles a month at your level, with every solution explained at the back. You can try twenty free puzzles on Lichess first.