Candidate Move Trainer
More actions
Location: Trainer > Candidate Move Trainer
The Candidate Move Trainer presents you with a position from your repertoire (or Custom FEN) and challenges you to calculate the strongest candidate moves. Your answers are evaluated against Stockfish analysis, helping you improve your move selection, deepen your calculation ability, and sharpen your instincts for identifying the best options in critical positions.
This allows you to:
- + Practice identifying the strongest candidate moves under time pressure
- + Compare your chosen moves directly against Stockfish evaluations for objective feedback
- + Develop disciplined calculation habits by ranking multiple candidate moves
Controls
The Controls section lets you choose how to start your training session. You can paste a Custom FEN and click Train to begin, or click the Random button followed by Train to start with a random position from your repertoires. You can also set a countdown timer to challenge yourself to calculate quickly and make decisions under time pressure. Once the session has started, you can click Quit at any time to end the exercise and view your results.
Chessboard Card
The Chessboard Card is where you make your move selections. Simply move your pieces to choose a candidate move — arrows will appear on the board to visualize your guesses. During training, all arrows appear in dark grey. Once the training move is completed, results are displayed using color-coded feedback:
- ◦ Green: Your guess matched one of the top moves according to Stockfish evaluation
- ◦ Red: Your move was outside of the top five engine choices
- ◦ Grey: Moves you missed — other strong alternatives from the engine
This visual feedback allows you to instantly see how your candidate moves compare to engine preferences and reinforces pattern recognition through repetition.
Your Guesses
The Your Guesses section appears after you start a training session. This is where you’ll generate and organize your candidate moves. The number of guesses is determined automatically by Stockfish — up to a maximum of five moves per position. Only the most relevant moves are shown; unrealistic or poor-quality options are removed (for example, any move that differs by more than ±2 in evaluation from the top engine move). This ensures you focus solely on practical, competitive options instead of random or losing moves.
Once the list of possible candidate moves is generated, you can reorder them by dragging and dropping, or by using the up and down arrows. Your goal is to determine which move you believe is the strongest — ranking your guesses from best to worst. When you’re satisfied, click Submit to view how your rankings compare to Stockfish’s actual evaluation order.
When the training session ends — either because the timer runs out or you click Quit — the results are displayed. You’ll see a full comparison of your selected moves versus the engine’s preferred order, along with evaluations and continuation lines for each move. This helps you understand both the quality of your guesses and the reasoning behind the top choices.
Analytics Card
The Analytics Card provides supporting data and quick access to related reference tools. It includes several sources you can use to explore or load positions for further practice:
- ◦ My Repertoire Moves: Quickly select a position directly from your repertoires
- ◦ Position Library: Browse stored positions from your personal library
- ◦ Opening Library: Access a library of all named chess openings for quick setup and exploration
By practicing regularly with the Candidate Move Trainer, you’ll develop faster decision-making, stronger calculation discipline, and a deeper understanding of which moves truly matter in critical positions.