Chess puzzles for absolute beginners
Everyone starts by being told to study tactics and then handed a position with fourteen pieces on it. This is the other end of that.
- 120 positions in the course
- Difficulty 600–1193
- Section: First Moves
- 5 levels
What a beginner puzzle actually teaches
A beginner chess puzzle is not a smaller version of a hard one. It is a position stripped down until only one idea is left in it, so that when you find the move you learn the idea rather than getting lucky.
That matters more than it sounds. A puzzle you solve by trying everything teaches you to try everything, which is exactly the habit that stops working the moment there are more than four candidate moves.
How to spot it
- Count what is attacking and what is defending before you look for a move.
- Look at checks first. They are forcing, there are usually only two or three, and one of them is often the answer.
- If nothing is check, look for the biggest piece you can take safely.
- If you cannot see anything, ask what your opponent wants to do next. The answer is frequently the same square you should be looking at.
Three beginner positions to try
Three positions from the 120 in this skill, easiest first. The highlighted squares are the move your opponent has just played. Work it out before you open the answer.
Position 1
Black to move. Find the best move.
Show the answer
17.Nxd5 17...Qxe2#
The line ends in checkmate. The whole idea is visible in one move, which is what makes it a beginner position rather than an easy one.
The position comes from the middlegame of a real game, rated 603 for difficulty. The answer reaches checkmate.
Position 2
White to move. Find the best move.
Show the answer
8...c6 9.Qxf7#
The line ends in checkmate. The whole idea is visible in one move, which is what makes it a beginner position rather than an easy one.
The position comes from the opening of a real game, rated 879 for difficulty. The answer reaches checkmate.
Position 3
Black to move. Find the best move.
Show the answer
54.d7 54...Rg8#
The line ends in checkmate. The whole idea is visible in one move, which is what makes it a beginner position rather than an easy one.
The position comes from an endgame of a real game, rated 1163 for difficulty. The answer reaches checkmate.
The two habits worth building now
Before every move, look at what your opponent's last move just changed. Not what it threatens -- what it changed. Almost every blunder under 1000 is a reply to a move nobody actually looked at.
And check that everything you own is defended before you start planning. Two seconds of that is worth more rating than any opening you could learn this month.
Questions people ask
Are chess puzzles good for beginners?
Yes, and they are close to the only training that reliably works at the start. Games teach you very slowly because you only meet a critical position every few minutes; puzzles are nothing but critical positions. The one caveat is difficulty -- puzzles you cannot solve teach almost nothing, so start where you solve most of them.
How many chess puzzles should I do a day?
Ten to twenty is plenty, and consistency beats volume by a wide margin. Five a day every day will move you further in a month than a hundred in one sitting, because pattern recognition is built by repetition spaced out over time rather than by effort.
Do I need to know chess notation to solve puzzles?
No. You play the move on the board and the trainer tells you whether it was right. Notation is worth learning eventually because it lets you read chess writing, but it is not a prerequisite for anything.
Nearby patterns
Getting Started sits in First Moves. The rest of that section: