Chess Move Chooser

Chess Move Chooser: The Complete User Manual

Every tool on Chess Move Chooser explained in one place — how to use it, what it's for, and where to find it. Everything runs locally in your browser: no accounts, no cookies, no paywalls, and your data never leaves your device.

Jump straight to a section, or read top to bottom for the full picture:

Analyze a Position

The core tool on the home page. Set up any position and get an instant, engine-backed recommendation from Stockfish.

Setting the board: drag pieces from the margins onto the board to recreate a position, or paste a FEN string directly into the FEN box. Use Flip Board to view the position from the other side.

Position rules: toggles let you specify whose turn it is, whether White or Black still has castling rights, and whether an en passant capture is available.

Target Elo: scale the engine's strength from Elo 800 (Beginner) up to Elo 3200 (Full Engine) to see how players of different levels might approach the position.

Solve for Mate: if you'd rather find a forced checkmate than a single best move, click Solve for Mate to send the position straight to the Checkmate Puzzle Solver.

Reading the results: after analyzing, the results screen shows the recommended move plus an Alternatives list of other strong candidates, an Appearance panel for switching board themes, and the position's FEN (tap to copy). Click Explain This Move for a plain-language rationale, or Apply Move & Continue to keep exploring from the resulting position. Developers can grab the same data as JSON — via the Copy JSON button, the window.CMC_ANALYSIS_RESULT object, or the cmc-analysis-ready DOM event.

Play vs Stockfish (Classical, Freestyle & Checkers)

Head to Play vs Stockfish for a full game against the engine, a friend on the same device, or Checkers instead of chess.

Game modes: choose Classical for standard chess, Freestyle for Chess960 (randomized back-rank starting positions — see the Freestyle Chess rules), or switch to Checkers entirely (see Checkers below).

Opponent: play vs Computer at a difficulty of Easy, Medium, or Hard (or a specific target Elo), or pick 2 Players (Local) to pass the device back and forth with someone next to you. Choose which color you play with Play As.

Clocks and pacing: the Game Clock offers presets from 1-minute bullet up to a 40/90 +30 classical time control. Turn on Simulate human think time to make the engine pause realistically instead of replying instantly, and toggle Move Indicators or Trainer Mode for extra visual guidance while you play.

During the game: use Undo, Resign, New Game, or Import PGN to load a game in progress. Copy Analyze Link generates a shareable link to the current position. When the game ends (or any time you want a deeper look), click Review Game to open it in Game Review.

Game Review

Game Review walks back through a finished (or in-progress) game move by move with full engine analysis.

Navigation: use the on-screen step controls to move to the first, previous, next, or last move, or click Auto Play to watch the whole game unfold. Toggle Playback Indicators to show or hide move arrows and quality badges (best, good, inaccuracy, mistake, blunder) as you step through.

Analysis: at any move, click Run Analysis for This Move for an engine evaluation, Explain This Move in Depth for a written rationale, or Analyze All Missing Moves to fill in evaluations for the whole game at once. The Game Summary panel rolls everything up into an overview.

Exporting: use Copy PGN to grab the full game notation, or Download GIF to export an animated GIF of the game (rendered in whichever board theme you currently have selected).

Scan a Screenshot

Scan a Screenshot turns an image of a chess position into a playable board using an on-device AI vision model — nothing is ever uploaded anywhere.

How to use it: drag, drop, or paste (Ctrl/Cmd+V) a screenshot from Chess.com, Lichess, or a book diagram. The scanner detects the board, every piece, and the board's orientation automatically.

Confirming the position: if the automatic orientation guess needs a correction, use the a1-corner picker overlay to tell the scanner exactly where the a1 square is. You can also drag individual pieces to fix any detection errors before continuing.

Next step: once the detected FEN (tap to copy) looks right, click Looks Good — Continue to Analyze to send it to the analyzer, or Solve for Mate to send it straight to the Checkmate Puzzle Solver.

Sequence Trainer

Sequence Trainer is an interactive way to study a specific line, opening, or game fragment move by move.

Loading a sequence: enter a starting position (FEN, or leave blank for the standard starting position) and paste your moves as PGN or bare SAN. Importing a full PGN also picks up the game headers (players, event, date, and so on).

Playback: step through with the on-screen controls or your keyboard's left and right arrow keys, click Auto Play to watch it unfold automatically, or Flip to view from the other side.

Sharing and exporting: click Share to generate a link to the exact sequence, Download GIF to export it as an animated GIF, or Open in Review to continue studying it in the full Game Review view. Pause on any move and click Analyze with Stockfish for an instant evaluation.

Puzzle Trainer

The Puzzle Trainer sharpens tactical vision with rated puzzles drawn from real games in the Lichess puzzle database.

How it works: you're dropped into a position where a forced tactic exists — make your move and the opponent auto-replies. Solve it correctly to raise your Puzzle Rating; miss it twice and your rating drops slightly, calculated with the same Elo win-probability math used for chess ratings generally.

Your rating and Daily Streak are saved only in this browser — there's no account and no leaderboard, and you can wipe them any time with Reset Rating & Streak. A curated puzzle set is bundled with the site, so once the page has loaded you can keep solving completely offline.

Checkmate Puzzle Solver

The Checkmate Puzzle Solver sets up any position and puts Stockfish to work finding a forced checkmate, rather than just a good move.

Setting it up: drag pieces onto the board or paste a FEN, choose the Side to Move, and set the Position Rules (castling rights and en passant availability). Pick a Search Depth — up to mate in 3, 5, or 7 (the deepest search takes longer).

Reading the result: if a forced mate exists within the depth searched, you'll get the full move-by-move sequence with an on-board replay you can step through, along with Copy PGN and Download GIF to save or share it. Click Edit Position to go back and adjust the setup. If Stockfish can't find a mate within the depth you picked, it says so plainly rather than guessing.

Elo Rating Calculator

The Elo Rating Calculator predicts exactly how a game's result will change your rating.

Enter Your Rating and Opponent's Rating, pick the Result (Win, Draw, or Loss), and choose the K-Factor that matches your federation or platform — the calculator explains what each K-Factor option means as you pick it. Click Calculate for your exact expected score and rating change.

Import Lichess Games

Import Lichess Games pulls games directly from any public Lichess profile for deep engine analysis and mistake-checking.

Enter a Lichess Username, set the Max Games to Fetch, and optionally filter by Time Control (Bullet, Blitz, Rapid, or Classical), then click Fetch Games. Once games are loaded, use Download PGN to save them, Analyze All to run the engine over every game, or open an individual game straight into Play vs Stockfish for a move-by-move walkthrough.

Checkers

Chess Move Chooser also plays Checkers, entirely client-side. Switch to the Checkers game mode from Play vs Stockfish, or read the Checkers Rules page first if you're new to the game. Checkers shares the same clock, difficulty, and 2-player local options as chess.

Educational Resources

Beyond the interactive tools, Chess Move Chooser includes a full library for players studying the theory of the game:

Rules Guide: a comprehensive breakdown of everything from basic piece movement to Castling, En Passant, Underpromotion, and Draw Rules — start at How to Play Chess if you're new.

Openings Database: the ideas behind standard setups like the Caro-Kann, Sicilian Defense, and Queen's Gambit, plus niche systems like The Cow Opening.

Tactical Scenarios: classic patterns like the Smothered Mate and common Opening Traps, so you recognize them in a real game.

Blog: the Chess Blog covers chess history, rules, and strategy in plain language.

Customizing Your Experience

Change the board's appearance any time from the Appearance panel on the results screen (or the equivalent panel on Review and Puzzle Solver pages). Choose from Traditional Brown, Forest Green, Ocean Blue, Midnight Slate, or Royal Purple — your choice is remembered and also applied to any GIFs you export.

Your Data & Privacy

Chess Move Chooser has no accounts and no server-side storage. Your board theme, Puzzle Trainer rating, and streak all live in your browser's local storage, not on our servers, and are never shared. You can start completely fresh at any time by clearing your browser data, or using the Reset Rating & Streak button on the Puzzle Trainer. See the full Privacy Policy for details.