Capture chain

What it trains

Seeing an order of moves before you play the first one. A board here dies quietly, several captures before it looks dead, so the only way up the ladder is to plan the chain rather than take what gleams: the seed of calculation in a real game.

How to use it

Every move must capture a piece, and the last piece standing has to stand on the marked square. The board is all one colour on purpose, an exercise rather than a position: no kings, no checks, any piece takes any other. A pawn captures one square diagonally up the board and becomes a queen on the last rank.

One run is the whole ladder: twelve boards from two pieces to twelve, the top size dealt twice, a fresh board every time. One wrong capture ends the climb, and the drill calls it the moment it happens: after every move it checks, exactly, whether a winning order still exists, so a fatal capture is a computed fact, not an opinion, and the panel shows you the order that was still alive. There is no time limit, only a clock that runs while the board is yours and pauses between boards; your bests are how many boards you cleared, and the fastest full climb.

The other drills