Lichess vs Chess.com — Best for Opening Training?

The Question I Kept Asking Myself

I've been subscribed to Chess.com on and off for three years. I've also used Lichess consistently for the same period — partly because it's free and partly because I genuinely prefer some of its features. When it came to opening preparation specifically, I kept moving between the two platforms without ever stopping to actually test which one was producing results.

So I decided to do it properly. For six weeks, I focused specifically on opening training. I used Chess.com's opening tools for three weeks, then switched to Lichess's opening tools for three weeks, and tracked my opening accuracy in real games throughout. I'm going to tell you what I found — including some results that surprised me.

Before I dive in: this isn't a general Chess.com vs Lichess comparison. I've already written about how the two platforms compare overall. This is specifically about which platform is better for the one task of learning and retaining opening theory. That's a narrower question, and the answer is less obvious than you'd think.

What Chess.com Offers for Opening Study

Chess.com has the most polished opening study experience of any platform I've tested. The opening explorer is clean, fast, and well-organized. You can browse any position, see move frequencies from millions of games, filter by rating range, and click through variations interactively. The UI is genuinely enjoyable to use.

The Lessons section includes dedicated opening courses — some free, many locked behind membership. The courses are structured as video + interactive exercise combinations. A GM walks through the key ideas, then you practice with move-by-move exercises. The instruction quality varies by course but the best ones (the ones made by high-level players with pedagogical experience) are genuinely excellent.

I tried the "Opening Fundamentals" course, a Sicilian Dragon course, and a London System course during my three weeks. The Dragon course in particular was thorough — it covered the main lines, the key pawn breaks, and the typical attacking plans with good explanations of why each move was important.

The problem: I retained less than I expected after three weeks. I could follow along with the course content just fine, but when I sat down to play a rated game, the exact move order under pressure didn't come back reliably. I'd get to move 8 in the Dragon and have a vague memory of what the right plan was without remembering the specific moves. The video-plus-exercise format is great for understanding, but it doesn't reliably build the move-by-move board recall you need in real games.

Chess.com's opening explorer is excellent for research and database browsing. But research isn't the same as memorization.

What Lichess Offers for Opening Study

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Lichess's opening tools are less polished than Chess.com's but they have something Chess.com doesn't: a genuine active recall mechanism through the Lichess Studies feature.

Here's how it works: you (or anyone) can create a Study on Lichess that includes annotated variations, practice modes, and opponent simulations. In "Practice" mode, the study will play the opponent's moves automatically and stop to let you find the correct response. If you get it wrong, you go back and try again. This is active recall — being tested on positions rather than passively shown them.

During my three Lichess weeks, I created a study for the Ruy Lopez (main line through move 12) and used the practice mode daily. The experience wasn't as smooth as Chess.com's interface — you have to set up your own study or find a good community one, and the quality of community studies varies enormously. But when the practice mode is working, the active recall effect is real. By the end of three weeks, I was playing the Ruy Lopez mainline moves confidently to move 12 in rated games.

Lichess's opening explorer is also excellent and completely free. The Lichess opening explorer covers master games and all Lichess games, with filters by rating and date. It's comparable to Chess.com's explorer for research purposes.

The main Lichess weakness for opening training: it requires more setup work. You're building your own learning experience rather than consuming a curated course. That's a strength if you're organized and motivated, but a barrier if you want a turnkey study plan.

Where CheckmateX Fits In — And Why It Surprised Me

I want to be transparent here: I started using CheckmateX's opening trainer during this same six-week period, initially just to cross-reference, and it ended up being the tool I kept coming back to.

The reason is the active recall design. CheckmateX's opening trainer presents you with positions on the board and requires you to find the move before showing it to you. That's the same mechanism as Lichess's practice mode, but it's built into the core product rather than being a feature you have to configure yourself. You don't need to set up a study or find a community one — you select your opening, select a variation, and start drilling immediately.

What I found over six weeks: my opening accuracy in games improved most noticeably during the weeks I was using active recall (CheckmateX and Lichess practice mode) rather than passive content (Chess.com courses). That's consistent with what learning science research says about active recall versus passive re-reading — but it was striking to experience it directly.

The CheckmateX bot mode also lets me play out the opening against an opponent that always plays the mainline responses, which is another form of active practice that Chess.com's courses don't replicate as cleanly. I'd drill the Ruy Lopez opening positions in the trainer, then play five-minute games against the bot starting from move 1 to practice applying the preparation under time pressure. That combination — drill then apply — transferred to real games better than any single-platform approach I tried.

I'm not saying Chess.com's courses are useless. The explanations are genuinely excellent for understanding why moves are good. But understanding and retention are different things, and active recall builds the retention that passive video watching doesn't.

The Specific Opening Training Verdict

After six weeks of deliberate testing, here's my actual verdict on opening training specifically:

For understanding opening ideas: Chess.com's courses win. The video explanations from strong players are the best way to understand why an opening works, what the plans are, and how to think in the resulting positions. If you're learning a new opening from scratch, a good Chess.com course is the fastest way to understand it.

For memorizing opening moves: Active recall tools win — either Lichess's practice mode (free, requires setup) or CheckmateX's opening trainer (free, no setup required). Reading through moves and watching videos doesn't build the move-order recall you need in real games. Being tested move by move from board positions does.

For game analysis after using your opening: Both Chess.com and Lichess are excellent. Lichess's computer analysis is free. Chess.com's is paywalled for unlimited use but included in most subscription tiers.

My recommended stack for 2026: Start with a Chess.com course to understand the opening you're studying. Then drill the key positions with CheckmateX's opening trainer to build move-by-month recall. Then play it in real games on Lichess (where you can accumulate unlimited game data and analysis for free). Review your games with Lichess's free engine.

Using platforms for what they're each best at outperforms trying to use a single platform for everything. I tested this and the results were clear enough that I've kept this stack going past the experiment period. Check the best chess apps guide for a broader comparison of how these platforms stack up across training dimensions beyond just opening study.

Practical Tips for Opening Study That Actually Transfers

Before I wrap up, let me give you some practical tips that made a real difference in how much my opening preparation transferred to actual game results.

Drill positions, not move lists — The enemy of opening preparation is studying a list of moves rather than positions. When you see 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. 0-0 Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3 0-0 as text, your brain doesn't retain it the way it retains seeing each position on a board and finding the move yourself. Always practice from board positions.

Learn the branching points, not just the main line — Most opening failures in games happen not on the main line but at the first deviation. If your opponent plays 4. Ba4 instead of 4. Bxc6 in the Ruy Lopez, do you know what to do? Drilling only the mainline to move 12 but ignoring the key deviations at moves 4-7 leaves you vulnerable. Focus extra attention on positions 3-8 moves in, before the main line is fully established.

Play the opening in blitz games immediately after drilling — After a fifteen-minute drill session on CheckmateX, I play two or three blitz games specifically using that opening. The drill primes the positions in short-term memory; the blitz games move them toward long-term retention. The combination works better than either alone.

Track your accuracy in the opening phase — Chess.com's game review shows you your accuracy by phase. Lichess's Stockfish analysis shows similar data. Track your opening accuracy (accuracy in moves 1-15 or so) separately from your middlegame accuracy. If your opening accuracy is consistently lower than your middlegame accuracy, you're losing ground in the phase where you have the most control — and more drilling is the fix.

The goal of opening preparation isn't to memorize 30 moves and hope your opponent follows along. It's to understand the plans deeply enough that you make good moves automatically, and to have the specific move-order recall that gets you to those plans without losing time on the clock. That combination of understanding and recall requires different tools working together — and that's exactly why the multi-platform approach works better than picking one and hoping for the best.