← Guide

The Moves panel lists the game on the board, with the pieces drawn as figurines. Click a move to go there.

The main line is a table, one move a cell: click the cell to go to the move. Variations take a row of their own under the move they replace, smaller, as text; a variation's own variations follow it in parentheses. Click a move of a variation to follow that line: the arrows then move along it, and clicking a move of the main line brings you back. At the start of a variation, playing the main line's move takes the main line again, and another move starts a sister variation. Variations are saved with the game and travel in the PGN you copy.

A game written by hand may have a null move, written --: the side to move passes, where a move was not known or to show a plan (ChessBase and PGN write it so). It is shown and copied as --, the arrows go through it like any other move, and the engine analyses the position after it. Explain has nothing to say about a null move; it is never played in training, online or in the lobby.

Right-click a move for its menu:

• Copy ▸ Copy Move and Copy ▸ Copy Line up to Here put the move, or the game up to it, on the clipboard.
• Annotations lists the symbols with what each one means.
• Variations: on a move of a variation, Promote Variation makes it the line it hangs off (the moves it replaced become its variation, with their own) and Delete Variation removes it; on any move, Delete from Here removes it and the moves after it on its line, with their variations. Deleting asks first: it cannot be undone.

A move can carry one judgement of the move and one assessment of the position:

• !! brilliant move, ! good move, !? interesting move, ?! dubious move, ? mistake, ?? blunder, □ only move.
• +− White is winning, ± White is better, ⩲ White is slightly better, = equal, ∞ unclear, ⩱ ∓ −+ the same for Black.

Choose the symbol a move already has to take it off, or No Annotation to clear them all. Annotations are saved with the game at once and are written when you copy the game as PGN.

Comments — the text between the moves of a PGN game or of a lichess study — are shown in italics: under their move in the main line, between the moves in a variation. The commands programs put in comments (an evaluation [%eval 0.18], a clock, arrows) are kept with the game but not shown. Comments are saved in the database with the game and written back when the game is written as PGN.

Double-click a comment to write in it, right there, as a paragraph is written (Esc, Ctrl+Enter or a click elsewhere ends; emptied, it goes). Right-click a move for Add Comment or Edit Comment, a comment for Edit Comment and Delete Comment. The commands in it stay as they were. The moves written in a comment — "4.d4 cxd4 was best", "then Qg5" — are links: click one and its line is played on the board as a variation of the game (or the variation it already is is taken), then followed with the arrows like any other. A numbered move starts from that move of the line; one without a number goes on from the comment, or replaces the move commented. The circles and arrows a lichess study draws on squares ([%csl …], [%cal …] in the comment) are drawn on the board, in their colours, while the position of their comment is shown.