Players lose track of pieces mid-calculation.
Three moves deep, a bishop on the long diagonal quietly disappears from the picture in your head. The board in front of you was right. The one in your mind was not.
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Memory chess game · chess memory trainer Put a number on your mind's eye.
Memory Chess is a free memory chess game and chess memory trainer. Study a position for a few seconds, the board goes blank, then rebuild it from memory. Each round is a short memory test with an accuracy reading from 0 to 100% and a map of every square you got right or wrong.
Choose pieces and time. Free to play, with no account needed. You can also compare your score on the leaderboard. Or play today's daily board, the same position for every player.
–games played
1–60sstudy window
2–32pieces per round
24languages
Linares · Round 104 March 1998
Veselin TopalovvsAlexey Shirov
Study
Shirov, Black, is two pawns up, but bishops on opposite colours often hold a draw. Ten pieces.
Notebook
You can't improve what you never measure.
Most chess practice trains decisions. Very little of it checks whether you can actually hold the board in your head. That skill sits under calculation, blindfold play and spotting tactics, and it is usually left to chance.
Board recall is a trainable, testable skill.
Hold a position briefly, rebuild it, check the result. Repeat with more pieces and less time. We make no claims about your brain. We give you a reading you can track.
One round, one clean number.
Study, blank board, rebuild, score. Right squares are marked, wrong squares are marked, nothing is hidden. Rounds take under a minute, so you can run many.
Method
A round, under the microscope.
Scroll through one round on a real position: the end of Kasparov's Immortal, Kasparov against Topalov at Wijk aan Zee in 1999. The overlays show one way to memorise it, not a recording of anyone's attention.
Phase 1 · Studyt = 0.0s
Eleven pieces, ten seconds.
The final position of Kasparov's Immortal, after 44.Qa7. Topalov resigned here. Take in the whole board, not square by square. In de Groot's experiments, masters reproduced a briefly shown game position far better than weaker players.
Fig. White: king c1, queen a7, pawns f4, g3, h2. Black: king e1, rook d2, pawns c3, f5, g6, h7.
Start with the kings.
Fix two points first. Both kings sit on the first rank, two files apart, and Black's king has run all the way to e1. Place everything else relative to them.
Fig. the two kings ringed. Everything else waits.
Eleven pieces become three ideas.
Group pieces by what they do to each other. The kings fight over d2. Two pawn staircases meet. The queen and rook each aim at an unguarded h-pawn. Chase and Simon (1973) found that strong players recall positions in chunks of related pieces.
Fig. orange attacks, blue defends, grey joins a pawn chain, the bar marks a blocked pair. The rook on d2 sits in two groups.
Turn each group into a sentence.
Name each group by its job. Gobet and Simon (1996) describe strong players holding larger, schema-like structures. The sentences themselves are a technique, not a research finding.
Fig. the three groups, named. Their sentences:
- Stand-off. White's king hits d2. Black's king and c3 guard it.
- Stairs. Mirror stairs, h2 up to f4, h7 down to f5.
- Long shots. Queen a7 eyes h7. Rook d2 eyes h2.
The board clears.
No pieces, no hints. Rebuild from the sentences, not from a picture. Say them in order: the kings first, then each group.
Nothing to do here but hold three sentences.
Rebuild group by group.
Kings. The stand-off. The stairs. The long shots. Place each group with its sentence before you start the next.
Fig. the rebuild before it is checked. One pawn is on the wrong square. Can you see which?
Check it against your sentences, then score.
Re-check each relation on the rebuilt board. Is the rook still held twice? From c2 the pawn guards d1, not d2. The count, five and six, still matches, so only the relation check catches the slip.
Fig. ticks still hold, the red cross broke. Orange fill is the wrong square (c2), the ring is where it belonged (c3). 10 of 11 squares is 91%.
Field recording
Train the skill the game uses.
A short video by Colin Galen on visualization, the skill every round trains.
Calibrate
Take a calibration reading.
The Medium round from the real game: 6 pieces, two kings among them, 10 seconds. Then the board clears and you rebuild it. You'll get a readout card with your accuracy and recall by piece type. It works with mouse, touch and keyboard.
Ready · 6 pieces · 10s exposure
10.000s
Readout card
Awaiting run--%
Correct squares-- / 6
Rebuild time--.---s
Wrong pieces--
Exposure10.000s
A suggested difficulty appears after the reading.
correctwrong placementmissed square
- Press start. Study the position until the meter empties.
- Pick a piece from the palette, then tap a square. Tap a placed piece to remove it.
- Submit. Placing more pieces than the position had lowers your accuracy, so only place what you remember.
Difficulty
Four presets. One custom rig.
Load goes up, exposure goes down. Move up a tier when your readings hold steady, not after one lucky round.
| Difficulty | Pieces | Exposure | Load | Play |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Easy Just kings - perfect for starting out | 2 | 10s | Play | |
Medium A few pieces with comfortable time to memorize | 6 | 10s | Play | |
Hard More pieces with less time to memorize | 12 | 8s | Play | |
Grandmaster For chess masters with photographic memory | 20 | 5s | Play | |
Custom Rig Set your own variables to isolate one weakness. | 2–32 | 1–60s | Play |
Lab record
Come back for the trend line.
One reading is a snapshot. Ten readings are a measurement. Every round you play is kept on this device, and these panels fill in from your own rounds. Before your first round, the panels show Sample values, not real players. After it, a panel that cannot read your record yet says what it still needs. Open your dashboard
Still to unlock
Play a round →0 of 10 figures unlocked
- Fig. 1 · Memory span2 rounds at 80%+ with 3+ pieces
- Fig. 2 · Pieces held5 rounds over 2 days
- Fig. 3 · Accuracy over time5 rounds at one setting over 2 days
- Fig. 4 · Recall pace5 rounds at one setting
- Fig. 6 · Days in a row2 days played
- Fig. 7 · Forgetting curve3 reviews after the same gap
- Fig. 8 · Lab notebook1 round
- Fig. 9 · Miss map10 sightings per file and rank
- Fig. 10 · Recall by piece type20 sightings of a non-king piece
- Fig. 11 · Insights10 rounds
Fig. 1 · Memory spanSample
How many pieces you can hold.
8 pieces
Scored 80 percent or better in 3 rounds. Shortest study time among them 10 s.
Sample record · 12 sessions
Fig. 2 · Pieces heldSample
Pieces you place right, at any setting.
Dashed line: averaged over fewer than 5 rounds
Sample record · 12 rounds · any setting
Fig. 3 · Accuracy over timeSample
Your line, round by round.
Sample record · 12 rounds · Medium
Fig. 4 · Recall paceSample
Seconds per piece you rebuild.
Recent average 3.1 s per piece
Accuracy on the same rounds 88%
Sample record · 12 rounds · Medium
Fig. 5 · Today's board
One board a day, the same for everyone.
A new position opens every day at midnight UTC. Everyone gets the same board and study time, and you get one try.
Play today's board →Fig. 6 · Days in a rowSample
One round a day builds a streak.
Any finished round, game or practice, counts for its day. One missed day in any 7 is forgiven.
played forgiven missed today
Sample · the dashed square is today's run, still pending
Fig. 7 · Forgetting curveIllustrative
Short, spaced reviews beat one long session.
Boards you score under 80% on come back for review 1, 3, 7 and 14 days after you first see them. Your curve plots how much you recall at each gap.
Illustrative model of the spacing effect. Not measured data.
Fig. 8 · Lab notebookSample
What happened, and when.
- Day 12. Memory span moved from 6 to 8 pieces.
- Day 9. First 90 percent or better at 8 pieces.
- Day 7. 7 days in a row.
- Day 4. Round 10 played.
- Day 1. First round: 67 percent at 6 pieces.
Entries appear as you play.
Fig. 9 · Miss mapSample
Where your squares slip.
Sample: misses pile up on the h-file and around the king's corner at h1. Train that edge next.
Fig. 10 · Recall by piece typeSample
Which pieces slip.
Recall by piece type appears after your first round.
Sample: pawns and knights slip first.
Fig. 11 · InsightsSample
What stands out, and what to try.
A finding shows only once its numbers pass a minimum sample, and it names the counts behind it.
Example from a sample record: the a and h files missed about 3.5 times as often as the centre files, d and e, 35% of pieces against 10%.
Play 8 pieces, 15 s →
Sample finding, not from your rounds.
Fig. 12 · ProgramsSample
Pick a plan and see it through.
One plan at a time. Progress is counted from your rounds, so stopping a plan never deletes a round.
Plan A · 7 days
Baseline week
- One Medium round a day.
- Log the reading, ignore the urge to retry.
- Day 7: compare against day 1.
Plan B · 14 days
Edge-file drill
- Custom rig: 8 pieces, 15 s.
- Review your miss map every 3 days.
- Pair with the board vision guide.
Plan C · open-ended
Step-down ladder
- Hold 90% for three rounds in a row.
- Then cut study time by 2 seconds.
- When study time bottoms out, add pieces.
Fig. 13 · GoalSample
Aim for a reading.
Pick a piece count and an accuracy. The bar fills from your best round at that count or more since you set the goal.
Sample goal: 8 pieces at 85 percent. Best so far 78 percent, 92% of the way.
Fig. 14 · Personal bests
Your best reading per setting.
Bests are kept per setting, because 6 pieces and 20 pieces are different tests. Practice readings on this page stay apart from games.
Your best reading for each setting appears after your first round.
Fig. 15 · LeaderboardSample
Compare readings worldwide.
Each difficulty is ranked by correct pieces, then fewer wrong pieces, then faster memorize time, then faster solve time. Every row shows the player's country.
EasyMediumHardGrandmaster
Submit a score from the result screen, then check where it stands, worldwide or in your country.
Open leaderboard →Library
Reference library.
The Learning Center pairs short guides with drills, so each reading points to something you can practise.
Ref. 1
Board vision
See the whole board at once instead of one corner at a time.
Read guide →Ref. 2Visualization
Hold a moving position in your head as pieces shift.
Read guide →Ref. 3Calculation
Look further ahead without losing track of the board.
Read guide →Ref. 4Memory
Chunking and pattern techniques that raise your readings.
Read guide →Ref. 5Blindfold chess training
A four-stage plan from board recall to full blindfold games.
Read guide →Questions
Questions about Memory Chess.
What is Memory Chess?
Memory Chess is a free board-memory game. You study a chess position for a short time, rebuild it from memory, and get a score based on how many pieces you placed correctly.
How do you play Memory Chess?
Each round has three steps. Pick how many pieces to show and how many seconds to study, or start a preset. Study the position until the time runs out or you press Hide board. The board then clears: choose pieces from the palette and tap the squares where they stood. Submit to see your accuracy, the pieces you placed right and wrong, and how long you took.
Can beginners play Memory Chess?
Yes. You do not need to know chess openings or calculate moves. Start with fewer pieces and more study time, then make the game harder when you feel ready.
How does it train chess visualization?
Each round gives you focused practice holding a chess position in your mind and recalling where the pieces belong. Your score shows which positions feel easy and where you need more practice.
What should I look for when memorizing the board?
Start with easy anchors such as kings, queens, corners, and edge squares. Then look for groups, lines, diagonals, and empty spaces instead of trying to remember every piece on its own.
How can I make the game harder?
Add more pieces, shorten the study time, or hide the board coordinates. Change one setting at a time so you can see what makes the biggest difference.
Is Memory Chess free?
Yes. You can play for free without creating an account. Adding a name to the leaderboard is optional.
How often should I practice?
A few focused rounds on a regular schedule is a good place to start. Keep sessions short enough that you can still study each position carefully.
Your first reading takes under a minute.
No account, no download, no sign-up. Open a round, study, rebuild, read the number. Then decide if you want a second one.
