Training built from your own games
A tactics book gives you somebody else’s positions. These four modes give you yours — the exact moments your own games went wrong, back to play again.
- Blunder Shield
Every position where you dropped material, back to play again.
- Blunder Training
The same, but past the opening — where your own thinking took over.
- Conversion Trainer
Positions you were winning, and then were not.
- Endgame Trainer
Your own endings, replayed with the pieces off the board.
Not a set of positions but an opponent: pick up any of the above and play it out against a bot near your rating, so the position has to actually be won. Open sparring
Why your own games
Tactics training works, and it works better when the pattern is one you have personally got wrong. A fork you missed in a real game already has a memory attached to it; the same fork in a puzzle book is an abstraction.
The four modes differ only in what they look for. Blunder Shield takes every position where a move cost material. Blunder Training does the same past move ten, where the decision was yours rather than the opening’s. The Conversion Trainer finds advantages you had and lost. The Endgame Trainer finds the endings you actually reached.
None of them grades you against a perfect game. Playing a move the engine does not prefer is usually fine; playing the move that lost the game twice is not, and that is the one thing these will always tell you.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the positions come from?
Your own imported games from Chess.com or Lichess. Each mode scans your recent games for positions matching its condition — material dropped, a winning advantage lost, an endgame reached — and puts you back in the position before the move was made.
How is this different from puzzles?
A puzzle is somebody else's position with one correct answer. These are your positions, and several answers are usually fine — the trainer tells you when you have repeated the move that actually lost, which is the thing worth knowing.
Do I need a subscription?
No. A free account gets one position per mode, which is the full experience on a smaller set. A subscription opens the whole session and the other modes.
How many games do I need?
Enough to contain the mistake you are training. Blunder Shield usually finds something in twenty games; the Endgame Trainer needs games that actually reached an endgame, which is a smaller fraction of most histories.