The Unblocked Chess Blog
Fourteen articles and counting. Practical chess advice you can actually use. No jargon, no fluff — just clear guides that help you improve, whether you're just starting out or trying to break through your current rating plateau.
2 Player Chess on One Device
Two people, one screen, no account. How pass-and-play works, why the board enforcing the rules settles most arguments, and the odds handicaps that make a mismatched game fun.
Read the guide →Playing Chess Against the Computer
Five difficulty levels and how the engine actually chooses its moves — negamax search, alpha-beta pruning, and the deliberate randomness that makes level one beatable.
Read the guide →How to Beat the Computer at Chess
A browser engine is strong tactically and weak somewhere specific. Six tactics that exploit shallow search — closed positions, patient endgames — and what genuinely won't work.
Read the tactics →Is Chess Luck or Skill?
No dice, no hidden cards, no randomness in the rules at all. But results still carry variance. Where the line actually falls, and why the answer has legal consequences.
Read both sides →Does Chess Make You Smarter?
The research is far weaker than the claim. Why studies without an active control group prove nothing, what the famous memory experiment really showed, and better reasons to play.
Read the evidence →The Best Free Chess Websites
Lichess, Chess.com, ChessTempo and ChessKid compared. Which are genuinely free and which ration features — written with no affiliate deals and recommending a site that isn't ours.
Read the comparison →How to Set Up a Chess Board
Two things trip people up: which way round the board goes, and which central square the queen belongs on. A diagram of the correct starting position and the checks that catch both mistakes.
Read the guide →How to Castle in Chess
The only move that shifts two pieces at once. Diagrams for kingside and queenside, the five conditions that must hold, and why the rook is allowed to cross an attacked square when the king isn't.
Read the rules →How Many Squares Are on a Chess Board?
Sixty-four, if you mean the cells. Two hundred and four, if you count every square of every size. Where both numbers come from, plus the rectangle count and the formula behind them.
Read the answer →Is Chess a Sport?
The IOC recognised chess's governing body in 1999 and chess has won Asian Games medals — but the UK says no. Both sides of a hundred-year argument, and why it has money attached.
Read both sides →5 Chess Openings Every Beginner Should Learn First
You don't need to memorize 20 openings to play good chess. Here are five solid openings that cover almost every position you'll face as a beginner — and how to actually learn them without hours of study.
Read the guide →How Long Does It Take to Get Good at Chess?
Realistic timelines for reaching every rating level from beginner to master. Based on how much you practice, what "practice" actually means, and the difference between casual improvement and serious study.
Read the article →10 Common Chess Mistakes Beginners Make (And How to Fix Them)
Almost every beginner makes the same handful of mistakes — losing games without knowing why. Here are the ten most common, why they happen, and the simple fix for each.
Read the list →How to Practice Chess: A 30-Day Plan for Beginners
A day-by-day chess practice plan that actually works. Combines puzzles, opening study, endgame technique, and real games into a schedule you can stick to. Designed for beginners with 30 minutes a day.
Read the plan →What this blog covers
The Unblocked Chess blog focuses on practical, actionable advice for improving at chess. We're not interested in publishing news, engine analysis, or grandmaster tournament coverage — there are plenty of great sites for that. What we cover:
- Beginner guides — for people who just learned the rules and want a clear path forward.
- Improvement plans — structured practice routines for different skill levels.
- Opening advice — how to choose openings, how to study them, when to move on.
- Common mistakes — patterns of errors that hold most amateurs back, with concrete fixes.
- Chess as a hobby — the joy, frustration, and long-term reward of learning chess as an adult.
New articles are added when we have something worth saying. No fluff for the sake of an update schedule.
If reading this has left you wanting a game, start a two-player chess game — it opens straight into a board with no account needed.