What's new

Three courses for Black after 1.e4 e5: the Two Knights, the Morphy and the Berlin

Until now every course after 1.e4 e5 was for White. Now there are three for Black: one against the Italian and two against the Ruy Lopez.

The Two Knights Defense, 3…Nf6, meets the Italian 3.Bc4. Against 4.Ng5 the course plays the main line 4…d5 5.exd5 Na5 and stays out of the Fried Liver. It also covers 4.d3, 4.Nc3, 4.O-O and 4.d4.

Against the Ruy Lopez 3.Bb5 you can pick either course. The Morphy Defense, 3…a6, covers the closed lines after 4.Ba4 Nf6 and the Exchange Variation 4.Bxc6. The Berlin Defense, 3…Nf6, covers 4.O-O Nxe4, 4.d3, 4.Nc3 and 4.Bxc6.

Each runs from 1400 to 2200 and comes with the study plan. The Italian and Ruy Lopez guides now have a section for Black that links to them.

The Leningrad 4.Bg5, a fifth course against the Nimzo-Indian

The site already had four White courses against the Nimzo-Indian: 4.Qc2, 4.e3, 4.f3 and 4.a3. But after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 club players often go 4.Bg5. From 1400 to 1800 it comes up in about one game in five, more often than 4.Qc2 or 4.e3. Masters rarely play it, and until now it had no course here.

White pins the f6-knight in return. The course has chapters for Black's five most common answers: 4…h6, 4…c5, 4…O-O, 4…Bxc3+ and 4…d5. The first two get five chapters each. After 4…h6 5.Bh4 they are …g5, …c5, …O-O, …d5 and …b6, and after 4…c5 5.d5 they are …d6, …exd5, …Qa5, …h6 and …Bxc3+.

It runs from 1400 to 2200 and comes with the study plan. The Nimzo-Indian guide now covers 4.Bg5 as a fifth system.

Ochess for Android is on Google Play

The Ochess app for Android is out on Google Play. It has the courses for your rating with spaced repetition, the traps and puzzles, the endgame trainers, your games with engine analysis, and the labs you built here.

It is the same account as on the website, so your progress is shared: what you learn in the app shows up here, and the other way around. Without an account you can still try the first line of every course, ten puzzles a day and all the traps.

The iPhone app is next.

The Queen's Gambit Declined, as a course for Black

After 1.d4 d5 2.c4, 2…e6 is about one game in five at 1400 and more than four in ten at 2200. Black could already learn 2…dxc4 here, and the Queen's Gambit course for White meets 2…e6, but there was nothing for a Black player who wants to keep the pawn on d5. Now there is.

The course is built around …Nf6 and …Be7, and takes back with the e-pawn when White exchanges on d5. Each common White try has its own chapter. After 3.Nc3 Nf6 that is the Orthodox 4.Bg5, the Exchange 4.cxd5, and 4.Nf3, 4.e3 and 4.Bf4. After 3.Nf3 Nf6 it is the Catalan 4.g3, 4.Bg5 and 4.e3. The early 3.cxd5, 3.e3 and 3.a3 are covered too.

It runs from 1400 to 2200 and comes with the study plan. The Queen's Gambit Declined guide now points at the course, and its Traps button opens the traps of the opening.

Three new courses: the Queen's Gambit, the King's Indian and the Blackmar-Diemer

Queen's Gambit, for White. The site already had courses against 2…dxc4 and 2…e5, but not against the two replies Black plays most. After 1.d4 d5 2.c4, 2…e6 is about one game in five at 1400 and more than four in ten at 2200, and 2…c6 grows from 15% to 31%. The course meets the Declined with 3.Nc3 and the Slav with 3.Nf3, and 2…Nf6, 2…Bf5, 2…Nc6 and 2…c5 have their own chapters. The Queen's Gambit guide now points at it.

King's Indian Defense, for Black against 1.d4: …Nf6, …g6, …Bg7, …d6 and castling, whatever White sets up. The main line with 4.e4 d6 gets ten chapters, from the Classical to the Sämisch and the Four Pawns Attack. At 1400 only three players in ten answer 1…Nf6 with 2.c4, so the London, 2.Nf3, 2.Nc3, 2.e3 and the Trompowsky are covered too, with the same set-up.

Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, for White: 1.d4 d5 2.e4, and after 2…dxe4 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.f3 White gives a pawn for fast development and open lines. With accurate defence Black is better, and the course says so: every chapter opens with a reality check, and the lines where the defence holds end with a note. Black's moves come from blitz and bullet games, where the gambit is played and the defence is hard to find.

All three run from 1400 to 2200 and come with the study plan that starts you on the lines you will meet most.

The Vienna Gambit, as a course

1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 looks like a quiet developing move. In this course it is the first half of a gambit: the knight covers e4, and then 3.f4 goes for the centre. It is the King's Gambit played a move later, with a knight already out.

The course plays 3.f4 in every chapter but one, so there is one idea to learn. Black's two main answers get several chapters each: after 2…Nf6 3.f4 there are 3…exf4, 3…d5, 3…d6 and 3…Nc6, and after 2…Nc6 3.f4 there are 3…exf4, 3…d6 and 3…Bc5. 2…d6, 2…Bc5, 2…Bb4 and 2…c6 have their own. The exception is 2…f5: Black has already pushed the f-pawn, so the course takes it with 3.exf5.

It runs from 1400 to 2200, and the gambit does not score the same everywhere. Against 2…Nf6, White takes 55 to 59% of the points after 3.f4 in rated Lichess games. Against 2…Nc6 it is 52 to 53%, and stronger players pick the sharp answer more often: after 3.f4 exf4 4.Nf3, 4…g5 is a quarter of Black's replies at 1800 and more than four in ten at 2000. The course covers it from 1800 up.

The card comes with its own puzzle set taken from Vienna games, and the Vienna Game guide now points at the course.

Chapters now come back for review

A chapter you have played through no longer drops out of sight. It comes back four hours later, then after a day, three days, a week, two weeks, a month, three months and six months. A chapter that has climbed all eight steps counts as learned.

A review moves the chapter up a step only if you played it cleanly. With a hint it stays where it is and comes back after the same wait. A wrong move sends it back to the first step, and a chapter that keeps slipping is marked as difficult, so you can see where your repertoire is weak. Playing a chapter again before it is due is good practice, but it only climbs when the review is actually due.

On the Labs page a course you have started shows a ring with the share of chapters learned, and a card above the list says how many are due. Review now plays them one after another, and the bell reminds you when something is waiting, at most about once a day. It works for every course and for the labs you build yourself, once you are signed in.

Endgame trainers: the basic mates and the pawn endings

The new Endgames page has the seven techniques every player needs: mate with a queen, with a rook, with two rooks, with two bishops and with bishop and knight, then promoting a pawn and stopping one. Each has two or three levels. In the pawn endings the harder ones are positions where only one or two moves keep the result.

Every move is checked against a perfect endgame database. A move that still wins, but more slowly, turns amber, and at the end you see how many extra moves you used. You can take a move back after a mistake, ask for a hint in two steps (first the piece, then the move), step back through the moves, and switch on Strongest opponent once the normal defence gets easy.

Each attempt sets the level up turned or mirrored at random, and you can play White, Black or a random colour. Anyone can play. Signed in, your attempts and finished levels are kept.

Your own puzzle rating, and a history of every puzzle

Puzzles now count the way they do on Lichess. An attempt is lost at the first wrong move or hint and won when you solve the puzzle cleanly, and each puzzle moves your puzzle rating once. The puzzle's own rating stays hidden until you have solved it, and a king in check glows on the board.

Difficulty works as on Lichess too. Five levels, from Easiest to Hardest, look for the next puzzle 600 or 300 points below your rating, at it, or 300 or 600 above. They replace the slider.

The new history page lists every puzzle you have tried, day by day: solved, solved on retry or failed, what it did to your rating, with a chart of the rating above the list. A puzzle you failed comes back two days later, until you solve it cleanly.

Try Ochess without an account

You can now train before signing up. A guest gets ten puzzles a day, counted again from midnight, and the first line of every course to study and train.

What you do as a guest is kept in this browser, and it moves into your account when you sign up: the puzzles you solved and the course lines you trained.

Six courses now cover more of what your opponents play

A course line sometimes runs into a position that another chapter already covers. Until now it carried on with the same moves as that chapter, so part of the course repeated itself. In six courses those spots now teach a reply the course did not have yet: Anti-Benoni Modern, Jobava London, Anti-London, and the three courses against the English.

In Indian against English, for example, the number of positions where the course prepares you for more than one reply has doubled. If one of these courses is already in your Labs, open it again from the Courses page and you will be offered the new version.

The Alapin: a White course against the Sicilian

1…c5 is the second most common answer to 1.e4, and at 2200 it is the most common one. White courses here already covered 1…e5, 1…c6 and 1…d5, but not the Sicilian. The Alapin fills that gap. 2.c3 prepares d4 and builds the centre with pawns, so instead of learning the Najdorf, the Dragon and the Sveshnikov one by one, you get one system against the whole defence.

Each of Black's seven main replies has its own chapter: 2…Nc6, 2…d5, 2…d6, 2…e6, 2…Nf6, 2…e5 and 2…g6. The two main lines get the most room. After 2…d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 4.d4 Black's queen comes out early and White develops around it. After 2…Nf6 3.e5 Nd5 4.d4 White gets the big pawn centre.

It runs from 1400 to 2200, and here the band changes a lot. At 1400 four players in ten answer 2…Nc6 and the main lines are rare. At 2200, 2…d5 and 2…Nf6 make up about six replies in ten. The card comes with its own puzzle set taken from Alapin games, and its Traps button opens the Sicilian traps, Alapin ones included.

The Jobava London, as a course

The Jobava London is the London System with the knight on c3 first: 1.d4, 2.Nc3 and 3.Bf4 against almost anything. You keep the London's one setup for every game, but the fight starts early. Nb5 hits c7, f3 and e4 take the centre, and long castling sends the pawns up the kingside.

The course plays that setup against every first reply Black has. After 1…d5 there are chapters for 2…Nf6, 2…e6, 2…c6, 2…Bf5, 2…Nc6 and 2…c5. After 1…Nf6 you get the King's Indian and Nimzo set-ups, 2…d6 and the 2…c5 Benoni try. The Modern, the Dutch and the Pirc move order have their own chapters too.

It runs from 1400 to 2200. Pick your band in the toolbar and your opponent plays what players at that level really play, and the difference is bigger than you would think: after 4.Nb5 in the main line, half the players at 1400 answer 4…Bd6, while at 2200 most of them play 4…Na6. The card comes with its own puzzle set taken from Jobava games, and the Jobava London guide now points at the course.

The Scandinavian, from both sides

1.e4 d5 is the shortest route to a position you understand: the centre pawn comes off on move two, and from there Black builds the same camp almost regardless of what White does (…c6, …Bf5 or …Bg4, …e6, …Nf6). The new Black course covers that camp against everything White has: 3.Nc3, 3.Nf3, 3.d4 and 3.c4 after the queen recapture, and the move orders that avoid the recapture altogether (2.e5, 2.Nf3, 2.Nc3 and the Blackmar-Diemer's 2.d4).

The White course is the answer to the other side of the board, and it treats the queen's retreat as the real branching point it is: 3…Qa5, 3…Qd8, 3…Qd6, 3…Qe5+ and 3…Qe6+ each have their own chapter instead of being lumped together, because the plans against them differ from move four. The gambit lines are there too (the Portuguese with 2…Nf6 3.d4 Bg4, the Icelandic-Palme and the Blackburne-Kloosterboer), so a surprise on move two stays a position you have seen.

Both run from 1400 to 2200: pick your band in the toolbar and your opponent plays what players at that level really play. Every line was replayed to its last move and the engine asked what that position is worth, so a line stops where the game is decided rather than where the file ended. Both cards come with their own puzzle set, and the Scandinavian guide now points at the course and at the traps the opening throws up.

The Ruy Lopez, in three courses

The Spanish was the last big gap in the White repertoire here, and it is filled: three courses after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5, one per style of game. The Closed main line keeps the bishop with 4.Ba4 and castles: the slow squeeze, the knight tour, the full pawn centre. The Exchange takes on c6 at once and plays the structure. Modern d3 is the practical one: it steps around the Berlin endgame and the Marshall instead of arguing with them, and against the Berlin it is what most players above 2500 now choose.

Each one is a complete answer to 1…e5, not just to the Lopez tabiya. Everything Black can do on move three has its own chapter (the Berlin, the Steinitz, 3…Bc5, the Schliemann, the Cozio, Bird's 3…Nd4), and so do the openings that never let you play 3.Bb5 at all: the Petroff, the Philidor, the Elephant and the Latvian. You are not left improvising on move four.

Every line was replayed to its final move and the engine asked what that position is actually worth, because a course that stops one move before the refutation is worse than no course. All three came back clean. The lines end where the game is decided, not where the file ran out.

Pick your rating band in the toolbar. All three run from 1400 to 2200, and what your opponent plays in them is what players at that level actually play. Each of the three cards has its own puzzle set, and the Ruy Lopez guide now points at the courses and at the traps this opening throws up.

A puzzle set for every course card

Every course on the site now has its own puzzle set. Sixteen course cards had none until this week: the four Caro-Kann courses, the four built around the English, and the Nimzo-Indian, Anti-Benoni and Italian courses that are not the flagship of their family. The puzzle hub grew from nineteen sets to thirty-five.

A set holds up to two thousand puzzles that arise from that opening, and you solve them from the side the course teaches: White in the London, Black in the Grünfeld. Some variations are too rare in real games to fill a set of their own; a card like Nimzo-Indian: Rubinstein carries the whole family's set instead, which is what the flagship cards did already. Three sets stay short because the openings themselves are rare: the Czech Benoni has only a few dozen puzzles, the Benko and the Anti-Albin under a thousand each.

Two small things got fixed on the way. The Caro-Kann guide still said there was no course two weeks after four went up; it now links to them. And the Najdorf guide was hiding the Sicilian traps by looking for them under its own name.

You will know when a message arrives

Messages between players have been on the site for a while, but nothing told you one had come in unless you opened the page. Now the bell in the header counts unread conversations next to your other notifications, and the dropdown shows who wrote and the first line of what they said. One click takes you to the thread. The account menu has a Messages item with the same count.

In the conversation list, an unread thread shows the sender's name in bold with a dot beside it, and it clears when you open it. Line breaks you type into a message now survive on the other side instead of collapsing into one paragraph.

Three new Caro-Kann courses, one of them on purpose unsound

The Caro-Kann is the opening our players meet more often than any other, and until now the site had a single course on it. There are four now. Black gets a full repertoire against everything White tries: 3.Nc3 and 3.Nd2, the Advance, the Exchange, the Panov and its accelerated cousin, the Fantasy, the Two Knights, 2.Nf3 and the King's Indian Attack. White gets the 3.Nc3 main line, next to the Short System in the Advance that was already here.

The fourth course is a different animal, and the card says so before you open it. The Alien and Martian Gambits throw a piece at the Caro-Kann on move six or seven. They are unsound: play the right defence and Black is simply better, which is why you will not see them in serious chess. What they do have is practical bite in blitz and bullet at club level, where the defence is hard to find at the board. That warning sits on the course card and repeats at the start of every chapter.

Before any of it went up, we replayed every line to its last move and asked the engine what the position was really worth. Ending a piece down is fine when the attack is winning. It is not fine when the defence held and nobody mentioned it. The two new repertoire courses came back clean. In the gambit course fifteen lines did not, and each of them now carries a note on the move where the attack runs out. Better that than quietly cutting the line one move earlier.

Courses are built per rating band, so pick yours in the toolbar. The repertoire courses run from 1400 to 2200; the gambit course stops at 1800, above which there is not enough played material to build on. For the first few weeks after a course goes up its card carries a New badge, and the Newest sort puts the fresh ones on top.

Twenty-eight new traps, taken out of our own courses

The trap catalogue went from 168 to 196. Three openings that had no traps at all now have their own pages: the Grünfeld Defense, the Modern Benoni and the Elephant Gambit. The rest landed in openings that were already there: the Italian, the Scotch, the Budapest, the Queen's Gambit Accepted, the London and more. For the first few weeks after a batch goes up, its cards carry a New badge in the catalogue.

They were not collected by hand. Every course on the site is built on a tree of what opponents actually play, and a move in that tree that loses on the spot is exactly what a trap is. So we walked the trees, kept the lines where one natural-looking move loses material or walks into mate, and played every one of them out on a board before writing a word about it.

Then we measured them. For twenty-six of the twenty-eight the page shows the rating range where players genuinely fall for the trap, taken from online games rather than guessed; the other two are left untagged, because the data was too thin to claim anything. Twelve of the new lines end in mate, the rest win material.

Traps: real game statistics on every trap page

Every trap page now has a live statistics panel under the move list: what people actually play in the position, win rates for each reply, and example games, filtered by rating and time control. The trap's own line is highlighted, and clicking a move plays it on the board.

The rating tags on the catalogue were re-measured too. Each trap shows the rating range where players genuinely fall for it, taken from online play, not guessed. Some results are surprising: a few "beginner" traps keep working well past 2000.

The catalogue also keeps growing: the newest additions are Caro-Kann traps, including the Alien and Martian Gambit lines.

A guided video tour on the home page

New to Ochess? There is now a 7-minute video tour on the home page: courses, game analysis, your repertoire, traps, puzzles and labs. It comes with chapter links, so you can jump straight to the part you care about.

The same move list everywhere

The move list from game analysis (numbered rows, moves centred, variations in brackets) is now the default in labs, courses, traps and puzzles. One layout to read, wherever you are on the site.

Game analysis: the report shows you the line, not just the verdict

Four changes to the game report. All of them work on games you analysed before: nothing to re-run.

Every mistake comes with a line. Under each inaccuracy, mistake and blunder you get the move you should have played and how the game could have gone on from there, about six moves deep. Click any move in that line and the board follows it.

An evaluation bar beside the board. It shows who stands better in the position you are looking at, and it shifts as you step through the game. Click a "was best" hint and the board rewinds to the position before the mistake, with a green arrow on the move you missed.

Move grades on the board itself. Every move is graded (Brilliant, Great, Best, Excellent, Good, Book, Inaccuracy, Mistake, Miss, Blunder), and the symbol sits on the square you moved to.

Click a number, walk through those moves. The counts in the summary are buttons: click the 5 next to Inaccuracy and the board jumps to the first one, then the next.

Find a course faster

The course catalogue has a search box (it matches opening names and ignores diacritics, so "grunfeld" finds the Grünfeld) and sorting by popularity or by name. Popularity follows how often each opening is actually played at your selected rating.

One slider for puzzle difficulty

Picking a difficulty range for puzzles is now a single slider with two thumbs instead of two separate controls. Drag the ends to set the band you want to train in.

Progress charts in My Games

The Progress view charts your rating, accuracy, Performance and Maia estimate over time, with a month-range slider to zoom into any stretch. One point per analysed game, so the chart reflects the games you actually reviewed.