Board vision trainer

Small drills that make the board familiar: know where e4 is without counting, read notation as moves instead of text, hold a short line in your head. Everything runs in your browser: no account, no engine, no stakes.

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Board vision

Knowing the board and what the pieces reach, without working it out.

Know the boardSquare colours, starting squares, and the geometry between them: diagonals, distances and what reaches what. No board at all: just know.Find squaresAn empty board and a square name: click it. The classic vision drill.Find squares, pieces onThe same drill with the starting position set up, so names attach to pieces.What it attacksAn empty board and one piece: click every square it attacks.Knight's journeyWalk a knight to the marked square in as few moves as it takes.Knight's gauntletWalk the knight to the marked square past enemy pieces that never move: land only where nothing aims. The classic knight-versus-queen exercise.Undefended piecesA real position: click every enemy piece you could capture that nothing defends.Knight forksA board of enemy pieces: click every square a knight could fork them from. About one board in four has none, and saying so is the answer there.

Notation and memory

Reading moves as moves, and holding a position in your head.

Play the movesA position from a classic game and the notation that follows: play it out, both sides.BlindfoldA few moves in plain text, no board. Then: where did the pieces end up?Memorize the positionA real position to study, then questions about it with the board hidden.Name the moveThe board marks one move, from and to. Write it the way chess writes it.

Planning ahead

Seeing the whole order of moves before you play the first one.

Capture chainEvery move takes a piece, and the last one standing must land on the marked square. One wrong capture ends the climb.Catch the runnerA pawn races for promotion. First the call: can your knight stop it at all? Then, on a yes, prove it. Half of them can't be caught.

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What board vision is

Board vision is the layer under tactics. A fork is easy to find when you already see which squares a knight reaches, and invisible when every square has to be worked out. Naming squares, reading notation and holding a position in the head are the small skills that layer is made of.

Drills are the gym version: short, repeatable, scored. A run takes thirty seconds to a few minutes, keeps your best score in this browser, and reports what it measured, like the squares you missed and the one that took you longest.

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A free account adds the coach's full reviews of your own games, puzzles built from tactics you actually missed at your measured level, and records that follow you. It starts with the review of one of your games:

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