Common Chess Weaknesses on Mainline
Mainline analyzes your real games to find the recurring mistakes costing you rating points, then builds targeted lessons and drills to fix each one. These are 26 of the most common weaknesses it trains.
- No plan after the opening: You finish developing, then drift
- Early queen sorties: Your queen comes out too early and gets chased
- Gives up developed pieces for nothing: You trade active pieces for pawn grabs or idle ones
- Castling too late: Your king lingers in the centre while you attack
- Winning material, then drifting: You grab material, then fail to convert it
- No plan in the Italian slow game: Bishops facing off, knights out, and you freeze
- Time trouble in won positions: You run out of time in positions you should win
- Hanging pieces: You miss undefended pieces, yours and theirs
- Missed forks: Two pieces attacked at once, and you don't spot it
- Missed pins: A pinned piece can't move, but you let it
- Missed skewers: You attack a big piece, miss the smaller one behind
- Back-rank mate: Your rook lands on their back rank for mate
- Discovered attacks: Move one piece, unleash another
- Trapped pieces: Their piece has no safe square, but you don't trap it
- Weak king safety punished: Exposed kings decide your games: you miss the punish, and you get caught yourself
- Clearance tactics: Move your piece out of the way so another piece can act
- Missed defensive resources: Under attack, you don't find the saving move
- Passed pawns and promotion: Push your passed pawn home for a new queen
- Endgame king activity: Your king sits on the back rank when the queens come off
- King and pawn opposition: You misplay the king dance in pawn endings
- X-ray attacks: Your piece attacks through another piece
- Deflection and overload: A defender is doing two jobs at once. Lean on it.
- Smothered mate: Your knight mates a king boxed in by its own pieces
- Zwischenzug (in-between move): An in-between move wins before you recapture
- Decoy and attraction: A sacrifice lures a piece onto a square where it can be hit
- Interference: Plant a piece on the line and the defender is cut off