The tactics ladder
Three thousand positions sorted not by rating but by the mistake you actually make. Miss a deflection twice and the ladder quietly serves you a third. It is very patient. It has to be.
pins · forks · deflections · 12 themes[ Online chess club · est. 2019 · study & trainer ]
Openings are borrowed. Endgames are earned.
Endgame is a club for people who would rather understand ten moves than memorise a thousand. Replay the classics until they are yours, drill the positions that decide games, and lose — briefly, on purpose, to better players who explain why.
- Members
- 12,417
- Puzzles set
- 3,200
- Studies annotated
- 96
[ The study hall ]
Seventeen moves at the opera.
Every week the club takes one classic apart, move by move. This is the first one every member replays: Morphy against a Duke and a Count, Paris, 1858. Scroll, and the board plays it back — the pin, both sacrifices, and the quietest queen move ever to shout. (or press play and keep your hands on the clock)
Mate — a rook and a bishop, the only two pieces Morphy had left, and the only two he needed. Development is not a style. It is the point.
- 1.e4
- 1…e5
- 2.Nf3
- 2…d6
- 3.d4
- 3…Bg4?
- 4.dxe5
- 4…Bxf3
- 5.Qxf3
- 5…dxe5
- 6.Bc4
- 6…Nf6
- 7.Qb3
- 7…Qe7
- 8.Nc3
- 8…c6
- 9.Bg5
- 9…b5?
- 10.Nxb5!
- 10…cxb5
- 11.Bxb5+
- 11…Nbd7
- 12.O-O-O
- 12…Rd8
- 13.Rxd7!
- 13…Rxd7
- 14.Rd1
- 14…Qe6
- 15.Bxd7+
- 15…Nxd7
- 16.Qb8+!!
- 16…Nxb8
- 17.Rd8#
33 / 33 half-moves
[ The trainer ]
Drill the game you actually lose.
Not another puzzle firehose. The trainer watches how your games go wrong and builds the syllabus backwards from there — the openings you flub, the middlegames you drift through, the endgames you almost hold.
Repertoire drills
Your lines, spaced-repetition style — drilled until your hands know them, then drilled against the sidelines your opponents actually play, which are never the ones in the book.
spaced repetition · 40+ systemsThe endgame lab
Réti, Lucena, Philidor, the wrong-coloured bishop. Ninety-six positions every game is secretly heading toward. Learn them once; collect half-points forever.
tablebase-checked · 96 studiesThe post-mortem
Import a game and get the honest version of what happened. Blunders annotated without mercy, improvements explained without jargon, and one theme to fix before Thursday.
engine lines · human words[ Membership ]
Three ways to take a seat.
All of them come with the club: rated games, league nights, and the weekly study. The difference is how much of the trainer you want pointed at you.
Pawn
£0forever
Every grandmaster was one.
- 10 puzzles a day
- club games, unrated & rated
- the weekly study, replayable
- the members' book (read-only)
Knight
£6/ month
Arrives at the fight by an odd route.
- the full tactics ladder
- repertoire drills, all systems
- post-mortems — 3 a month
- club tournaments & leagues
- everything in Pawn
Queen
£12/ month
Goes anywhere. So will you.
- unlimited post-mortems
- the endgame lab, unlocked
- a monthly simul with a titled guest
- coach office hours, twice a month
- everything in Knight
[ The members' book ]
Signed between rounds.
I joined for the tactics ladder. I stayed because somebody finally explained why the rook belongs behind the passed pawn — mine or theirs.
My rating went down for six weeks and then up for good. The post-mortems are rude the way good teachers are rude.
The weekly study is the closest thing I know to a seat in the second row at the opera. I have replayed the queen sacrifice more often than I have called my brother.
[ The club door ]
The clocks are already running.
Sign in and pick up where you adjourned: your ladder rung, your repertoire, your unfinished post-mortem. New members start as Pawns — promotion is traditional.
- League nights Tuesday & Thursday, 19:00 GMT
- The weekly study lands every Sunday
- Adjourned games keep for thirty days