Chess worksheets in PDF, with answers

36 printable worksheets, 432 positions, an answer key on every sheet. Click and it downloads. No sign-up, no email address, no watermark, and you may photocopy them for a whole class.

You are looking at the page that describes the worksheets, not the worksheets. The PDFs are at reflexchess.com/worksheets

The first three to print

If you are handing sheets to a child or to a class that has just learned how the pieces move, print these three in this order. One a week is plenty.

Every solution is a check, so there is one place to look and a child who finds it once finds the next one faster.

The single most valuable habit in beginner chess: before anything clever, is that piece defended?

The first pattern that feels like a secret, and the first one they will start avoiding in their own games.

How to mark a sheet if you do not play chess

This is the part that stops most parents and most volunteer staff, and it takes about two minutes to fix. The answer key writes each move the way chess has written moves for two hundred years:

• The capital letter is the piece. K king, Q queen, R rook, B bishop, N knight. No letter at all means a pawn.
• The lower-case letter and number are the square it went to. Files run a to h left to right, ranks 1 to 8 bottom to top, and every diagram on the sheet is printed with those letters and numbers around the edge.
• x means it captured something. Nxe5 is "knight takes on e5".
• + means check, # means checkmate. If the answer ends in # the game is over.
• O-O is castling on the king's side, O-O-O on the queen's side.

So Qxh7# is "queen takes the piece on h7, checkmate". Find h7 on the diagram using the edge letters, check the child wrote the same move, and that is the whole job. The key also gives one sentence per answer saying why the move works, which is usually enough to settle an argument about a different move that also looked good.

Where a child has written a different move that is also winning, they are not wrong, they have found a second solution. Real positions often have one. Give the mark.

All 36 worksheets

12 patterns, three bands each. Easy is the first worksheet for a club night. Intermediate is the standard sheet and most club players get eight or nine of the twelve. Advanced has longer lines and quieter first moves, so give it time.

An order that works over a term

Twelve patterns is roughly a school term at one a week, and this order puts the two habits that decide beginner games first, then the patterns that reward them.

1. Mate in one, then hanging pieces. Finishing and not losing pieces. Nothing else matters as much at this stage.
2. Back rank mates, then mate in two. The first patterns with a name, and the first that change how a child looks at their own king.
3. Forks, pins, skewers. The three that turn up in almost every game, and the ones worth naming out loud when they happen on a real board.
4. Double check, smothered mate, discovered attacks. The spectacular ones. Worth doing when attendance is flagging.
5. Deflection and trapping pieces. Harder, quieter, and the point at which the stronger children start to pull away. Give them the Advanced band.

Printing and licence, in plain words

Each sheet is three US Letter pages: two pages of diagrams and one answer key. Print in black and white. If the answer key is going to be handed out later rather than with the sheet, print pages 1 and 2 for the class and keep page 3.

Print them, copy them for a whole club, put them in a folder and use them for a term, use them in coaching you charge for. You do not need to ask and you do not need to credit us, though a link back to reflexchess.com/worksheets helps other coaches find them. The positions come from the Lichess puzzle database, released under CC0. The diagrams and the piece artwork are drawn by Reflex Chess and carry no attribution condition of their own, which is exactly why we drew our own set: a worksheet is a file that gets copied, and copied files should not carry licence terms a teacher has to read first.

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Running a school chess club · Teaching chess to kids · Easy puzzles to try now · The full worksheet index

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