Lichess Puzzles vs Personal Puzzles: Which Makes You Improve Faster?

Lichess has the best free puzzle database in chess. Over 4 million positions from real games, completely open-source, with ratings, themes, and verified solutions. If you're looking for a free chess tactics trainer, Lichess is the gold standard.

So why would anyone use anything else?

Because there's a fundamental limitation to any generic puzzle database, no matter how large or well-curated: the positions come from other people's games, not yours.

What Lichess Puzzles Do Well

Lichess puzzles are excellent for building a broad tactical vocabulary. The database covers every motif — forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, deflections, decoys, and hundreds of mating patterns. The positions are drawn from real games at all rating levels, so the difficulty distribution is natural and well-calibrated.

The adaptive rating system means you're always solving puzzles near your skill level. Too easy, and your rating rises to show you harder positions. Too hard, and it drops. This keeps you in the productive zone of challenge.

For beginners and intermediate players building foundational pattern recognition, Lichess puzzles are genuinely hard to beat. Cassandra uses the Lichess open database for its own general library — we believe in building on the best available resources.

The Limitation of Generic Puzzles

Here's the problem: Lichess puzzles are drawn from millions of games played by millions of players with millions of different opening repertoires, playing styles, and weaknesses. The positions you see are a random sample of chess tactics, not a targeted sample of your chess tactics.

This matters because your weaknesses are specific. If you play the King's Indian Defence, you face a particular set of middlegame structures that arise from that opening. If you play the London System, your tactical landscape is completely different. A random puzzle database treats both players identically.

The result is that a significant portion of your training time is spent on positions you'll never see in your own games. That's not wasted time — broad pattern recognition is valuable — but it's not the most efficient use of your limited training minutes.

What Personal Puzzles Do Differently

A personal puzzle is extracted from your own game. It shows you the exact position where you made a mistake, and asks you to find the move you should have played.

The advantages are immediate:

• Relevance. The position comes from an opening you play, a middlegame structure you reach, and a time control you're familiar with. You will see this type of position again.
• Emotional weight. You lost rating points because of this mistake. That emotional connection makes the learning stickier than solving a random stranger's position.
• Weakness targeting. If you keep making the same type of mistake — say, missing back-rank threats in rook endings — your personal puzzle bank will be heavy on exactly that pattern. The training naturally concentrates on your weakest areas.
• Progression tracking. As you solve personal puzzles and the mistakes stop recurring in your games, you can see the direct impact on your play.

The Research on Specificity

Cognitive science research on skill acquisition consistently shows that specific, contextualised practice produces faster improvement than general practice. A basketball player improves free throws by practising free throws, not by practising random shots from all positions.

Chess is no different. A player who drills the tactical patterns from their own games will improve faster in their own games than a player who solves generic puzzles — even if the generic puzzles are excellent.

This doesn't mean Lichess puzzles are bad. They're genuinely one of the best free training resources available. But they're a complement to personal training, not a substitute for it.

Using Both Together

The optimal training approach uses both generic and personal puzzles:

• Generic puzzles (Lichess, Cassandra library) for broadening your tactical vocabulary and maintaining pattern fluency across all motifs.
• Personal puzzles (from your own games) for targeted improvement on your specific weaknesses.

A practical split: spend 60% of your puzzle time on personal puzzles and 40% on generic ones. As a beginner, reverse that ratio — you need the broad foundation first. As you improve, shift toward personal puzzles. For a complete guide to using your blunders as training material, see how to train on your blunders.

How Cassandra Bridges the Gap

Cassandra gives you both. Our general library draws from the Lichess open database. Your personal puzzle bank is built by analysing your Chess.com and Lichess games with Stockfish and extracting your blunders.

Both are free. No paywall, no daily limits. We believe the best free chess tactics trainer should offer both breadth and depth.

[Build your personal puzzle bank — free →](/connect)