Chess puzzles for beginners

Every puzzle on this page has a winning move, and it is almost always a forcing one. So before you look for anything clever, go through three lists, in this order:

• Checks. Every check you can give, even the ones that look silly.
• Captures. Every capture, and for each one ask whether the piece you take is defended.
• Threats. Moves that attack a piece nothing defends, or threaten mate.

The first diagram is the simplest puzzle there is. The black knight on d4 has no defender: nothing black can recapture on d4. Rxd4 wins a piece for nothing. At 600 to 1000 most games are decided by exactly this, a hanging piece that one side did not notice, so the habit of asking "is it defended?" about every piece is worth more than any pattern. The full checklist, with the questions that find the harder tactics, is in how to find tactics in chess.

Each puzzle above is one of these, and each has a page of its own with more puzzles and the explanation:

• Mate in 1: one move ends the game. Look at every check.
• Hanging piece: a piece nobody defends. Take it.
• Fork: one piece attacks two at once, and only one can be saved.
• Pin: a piece cannot move without exposing a more valuable one behind it.
• Skewer: the pin turned around, the valuable piece in front has to move and the one behind it falls.
• Back rank mate: a rook or queen mates a king shut in by its own pawns.
• Discovered attack: one piece moves and uncovers an attack by the piece behind it.
• Double check: two pieces give check at once, so the king has to move.
• Removing the defender: take the piece that guards the target, then take the target.
• Trapped piece: a piece with no safe square left.
• Promotion: a pawn reaches the last rank and becomes a new piece, usually a queen.
• Smothered mate: a knight mates a king boxed in by its own pieces.

The second diagram shows the one beginners meet first in their own games. The knight on d5 jumps to c7 with check, and from c7 it also attacks the rook on a8. The king has to move, and the rook is gone.

All twelve come from real games on Lichess, whose puzzle database is public domain, and carry Lichess's own rating, between 600 and 1000. For each idea we took the most played puzzle that Lichess's players rate highly, at most two moves long, whose main theme is that idea and nothing more specific, and that no other page of this site already shows. The mates were checked move by move on the board: the mate is forced, there is no shorter one, and only one first move gives it.

When these feel easy, the mate in 1 puzzles and the mate in 2 puzzles climb from the same starting point, and the free puzzle rush turns the same ideas into a race against the clock. To know what your own number means, read what a good puzzle rating is.