Master moves: find the move a grandmaster found
In a classical game between two of the world's best players, there are a few moments where one move works and every other move loses ground: a win slips, a draw becomes a loss, or a pawn or more goes. Master moves gives you those positions. You find the move; then you see who played it, in which game, and why the move that looks natural fails.
An example
43...Kd4! Wesley So played it against Fabiano Caruana at the 2022 US Championship. The natural 43...Ke4 loses to 44.f3+ Ke5 45.fxg4, and the knight is gone. This is one of the easier ones, rated about 1000.
Where the positions come from
Every position is from a classical game played over the board between two players rated 2600 or more: Wijk aan Zee, Norway Chess, the Candidates, the World Championship and many more, from the public Lichess broadcasts since 2020. A position is used when the move the player found was the engine's best, and every other move was at least a pawn worse or changed the result, checked by Stockfish searching deep. At most three come from any one game.
What you'll meet at each level
The positions are rated from about 1000 to about 2000, and the higher they go, the quieter the move:
- 1000 to 1300: 85% are quiet moves, neither a capture nor a check; 10% are captures and 5% checks.
- 1300 to 1600: 92% are quiet.
- 1600 and up: 99% are quiet. One in eight is a king move.
At every level, about three times in ten the move that tempts you instead is a capture.
23.Nd5! Nodirbek Abdusattorov against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Superbet Romania 2024. The natural 23.Qf5 loses after 23...Bxf3 24.gxf3 g6.
38...Rd8! Magnus Carlsen against Ian Nepomniachtchi, game 9 of the 2021 World Championship. Going straight for the a7 pawn with 38...Ra8 lets the win slip: 39.Nb6 Rxa7 40.Rxa7.
How the difficulty is set
An item's rating is the level at which players would find the move about half the time, judged from what players at each level actually play, using Maia, a model trained on millions of Lichess games. It's set on the same scale as the other exercises, checked against how real players did on thousands of puzzles, and from the first attempts on, your own results move it. The easiest positions, mostly a piece taken in plain sight or a check, rated under about 1000, are left out: they're tactics, not master moves.
How answers are checked
You play the move on the board. The master's move counts, and so does any other move the engine rates as just as good. After you answer you see:
- the players, the event and the move number;
- the likely continuation after the right move, to step through;
- the move most players would choose instead, and the line that refutes it;
- a link to the whole game on Lichess, opened at the position.
Why it helps
Across the 6,433 moments we found in 1,713 of these games, 57% were quiet moves, neither a capture nor a check, and in 97% the move that comes to mind first, by Maia's reckoning, gave away a pawn or more. Tactics train the forcing moves. Master moves trains the other half: looking past the natural move to the one that works. It sits beside tactics and checking your move in your training.
Try it. Real positions, set at your level, every answer checked against the board. No account needed to start.
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