English Chess Forum

Hi all, I've noticed that there appears to be a problem with chess platforms and the puzzles they produce. In resting upon a right or wrong answer, it seems to me they are going awry at times as there is often more than one winning move, particularly with endgame positions. They don't categorise moves in terms of strength but expect there to be only one winning move. Has anyone else noticed they occasionally select winning moves but then told it's the wrong choice? If they are aiming for the quickest way to win at all times, it seems a bit strange why positions with intermezzos are included and endgame positions where king moves can be delayed with exactly the same result. Lichess seems to be guiltier of this than chess.com but in either case I'm not sure positions should qualify as puzzles when there is more than one winning move but only one accepted answer. I'm also not sure how winning a piece qualifies as a winning move also that's just a material gain to me. It seems like there is quite a bit of work required in this area.

Isn't this only really a problem if there is actually some sort of competition? One of the things about actual (as opposed to composed) chess is that positions where there is just one way to win (or draw) aren't in fact that common.

Sure but usually they are composed so that there is only one way to win but with online puzzles sometimes there's more than one way to win but they present them as having only one way to win. For example in one puzzle the king had to side step for a pawn to run through and queen and it made no difference which file or rank it went to as the result was the same no matter how it moved out of the way but whoever designed it chose a particular square and made all others the wrong move even though the resulting position was the pawn would queen. It seems like they are not checked thoroughly enough sometimes.

Try this site instead - https://chesspuzzle.net/.

These puzzles sometimes tell you something along the lines of "that move wins, but there's a better one; try again"

I used to do the puzzles on Chess.com and would frequently be annoyed on finding a winning move to find it was marked incorrect in favour of an apparently better one,