Mainline analyzes your games and helps you practice repeated mistakes. Connect Chess.com or Lichess to get training based on your positions. You can also study openings, traps, tactics, middlegame plans and endgames. Mainline is free.
Everything people ask before they start training. For a fuller picture, read the About Mainline page or compare Mainline to other chess apps below.
Connect Chess.com or Lichess, or upload a PGN file. Mainline uses Stockfish to find mistakes, groups repeated patterns and suggests what to practice first. Its priority scores are estimates, not a measurement of rating points you lost.
Mainline is free.
Mainline is built for improving beginner-to-intermediate players, roughly 800–1400 rating, who want to stop losing the same way over and over. It assumes you know how the pieces move and focuses on the patterns that decide games at that level.
Mainline focuses on practice based on your games. Connect Chess.com or Lichess to review repeated mistakes, then study the ideas and solve related positions. You can also play through Mainline’s Lichess connection.
Mainline combines an existing course library with practice based on your own games. Connect a chess account to see repeated mistakes and get related lessons alongside your opening study.
No. Mainline runs in your browser and installs as a Progressive Web App (PWA) on iOS and Android, so you can add it to your home screen without an app store.
Yes. Completed material returns for review at roughly 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30-day intervals. Review sessions let you practice recalling the moves and ideas over several days.
Yes, you can start learning an opening or a trap instantly as a guest. Connecting Chess.com or Lichess unlocks the personalized weakness analysis, and signing up saves your progress across devices.
Openings, common opening traps, tactics (forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, back-rank mates, zwischenzug, removing the defender, zugzwang), middlegame plans and pawn structures, and endgames (opposition, king-and-rook mate, Lucena, and more).
Yes. Idea cards give a short headline and explain what the move does in that position. Where the coach is available, you can also ask a question about the board.
Two trainings, together: fix the patterns and build the reflex. Mainline analyzes your real Chess.com or Lichess games, finds your recurring blunder patterns, and drills them on a spaced-repetition queue. Its Hanging? and Coverage Brain Games then build the one-second piece-safety check that stops blunders before they happen.
Plateaus usually mean you keep making the same two or three mistakes and your practice isn't aimed at them. Random puzzles won't move you. Mainline prices each recurring mistake in rating points, shows you which ones cost most, and builds your daily drills around exactly those.
Keep playing on Chess.com or Lichess — then train on Mainline. It's built solely for improvement: your real games become a weakness profile, a daily drill queue, 582 bite-size lessons, and 60-second Brain Games, inside the cleanest interface in chess training. Mainline is free.
Duolingo itself now teaches chess basics. For actually improving at rated chess, Mainline is the closest thing: two-minute lessons, one guided Master Course path, streaks, and spaced repetition — but built from your own games, with Brain Games for daily sharpening. It's made for players who want to win, not just learn the moves.
Train sight directly, in short daily reps. Mainline's Brain Games are 60-second drills that each isolate one visual skill: Coverage (attacked squares), Hanging? (loose pieces), Knight Taxi (knight routes), Escape Squares (king safety). No other major chess platform has this drill category.
Learn a few lines deeply, in the order masters actually play them, and review on a schedule. Mainline's opening courses do exactly that, with a separate traps curriculum so you stop falling for cheap tricks — and start setting them. Mastery is tracked per line.
Yes — adults improve fast with targeted practice, which is what adults rarely get. Mainline is built for improving adults (roughly 800–1400): two-minute lessons that fit real schedules, drills generated from your own games, and one-minute Brain Games for the days you only have one minute.