Chess Homework for Students: A Coach's Complete Guide

Short answer: Good chess homework is small, specific, tied to the last lesson and easy to start. For most students that means ten to fifteen minutes a day on one theme, with answers they have to find rather than read, and a quick check at the start of the next lesson. Everything else in this guide is detail on how to make that happen without it eating your evenings.

Written by James, Founder of chesscheatsheets.com. Last updated 20 October 2026.

Your lesson is one hour. The other 167 hours of the week decide how fast your student improves. Homework is how you reach into those hours, and it is also the part of coaching that most coaches find the hardest to keep up with.

I'm not a chess coach, and I won't pretend to teach your students better than you can. What I do is build practice systems, and I've spent years looking at why people don't stick with chess practice. This guide pulls that together for coaches: why homework gets skipped, how much to set, what to set, how to check it and how to stop it taking over your week.

Why does chess homework matter?

Homework matters because improvement happens between lessons. A lesson introduces an idea. Practice makes it automatic. Without practice, a student will nod along on Tuesday and have forgotten by Sunday, and you spend the next lesson teaching the same thing again.

It also changes the feel of your coaching. Students who practice arrive with questions and stories ("this one puzzle destroyed me"). Students who don't arrive with nothing and wait to be taught. The first lesson is far more fun to give.

There is a business angle too. Students who can feel themselves improving tend to keep booking, and parents who can see work being done are easier to keep happy. Homework is one of the few parts of coaching that works for you when you aren't in the room.

Why don't chess students practice between lessons?

The usual reasons are that the task is vague, too big, unrelated to the lesson, never checked or at the wrong difficulty. All five are design problems, not character flaws, so they can be fixed. We cover each in detail in why chess students don't practice between lessons.

The short version: replace "do some puzzles" with "solve these fifteen fork puzzles in one sitting". Specific tasks get done. Vague ones become guilt.

How much chess homework should you set?

For most students, start with ten to fifteen minutes a day, five or six days a week, and adjust from there. If a student completes it easily for a few weeks, add a little. If they're missing days, cut it back before you decide they're not committed.

A rough guide, which you should treat as a starting point and not a rule:

• Young beginners: five to ten minutes, often with a parent nearby
• Older children and teenagers: ten to twenty minutes
• Adults with busy lives: ten to fifteen minutes, in whatever slot they actually have
• Keen students aiming at tournaments: more, but build up gradually

The best amount is the one the student actually does. A smaller routine that sticks beats an impressive plan that dies in week two. Read more: How much homework to set

What kind of practice works best?

Practice that makes the student produce the answer works best. Research on test-enhanced learning, including a well-known 2006 study by Roediger and Karpicke, found that people remember what they practice recalling better than what they simply re-read. For chess, this means a student who has to find the winning move learns more than one who watches you explain it.

Three habits follow from that:

• Hide the answer until the student has had a real go
• Mix old themes back in after a few weeks, so ideas don't fade
• When a student gets one wrong, have them say why before showing the answer

Spacing helps too. Ten minutes on five days beats fifty minutes on one.

What can you set as chess homework?

Puzzles are the default, and with good reason, but they are not the only option. A healthy mix keeps students interested and covers more of the game:

• Themed puzzles. One tactic at a time, matching the lesson
• Play and review. One slower game a week, with a note on one moment they'd change
• Find the plan. A position with no tactic, and the question "what would you do here?"
• Endgame drills. Short, repeatable positions such as basic king and pawn endings
• Opening recall. Playing the first moves of their repertoire from memory
• Annotate your own game. Find the move where it went wrong

A theme each month is a good backbone, with the other types added around it.

How do you match homework to a student's level?

Aim for work the student can mostly solve, with a few that stretch them. If they get nearly everything right, it's too easy and they'll get bored. If they get most of it wrong, it's too hard and they'll feel stupid. A target of somewhere around two thirds to four fifths correct is a sensible zone, and it's a guide, not a rule.

Watch for these signals:

• Too easy. Finished in half the expected time, no mistakes, little interest
• Too hard. Skipped days, vague answers, "I didn't understand it"
• About right. A few mistakes, a couple of "that one was tricky" moments and a student who keeps showing up

Adjust one thing at a time. Change the amount, or the difficulty, or the format, but not all three at once, or you won't know what helped.

What should a new student's first week of homework look like?

Keep it light and give them an early win. The goal in week one is not progress, it is a habit. A simple version:

1. Day 1 to 3. Five to ten easy puzzles on the theme from the lesson. The aim is to finish, not to be challenged
2. Day 4 to 5. A few puzzles that are slightly harder, plus a note of any that were tricky
3. Day 6. One game, played slowly, with no analysis required
4. Day 7. Rest

At the next lesson, ask which puzzle was hardest and start from there. You learn how the student works, and they learn that you notice.

How should homework change over a term?

It should start small and grow with the student. Over a term of eight to twelve weeks, a sensible shape is:

• Weeks 1 to 2. Build the habit. Short, easy and regular
• Weeks 3 to 6. Increase difficulty and amount a little, and bring back old themes for review
• Weeks 7 to 10. Mix themes so students have to work out which one applies
• Final weeks. Review the lot and play more games to see what has stuck

If a student stalls, step back a level for a week. It's easier to rebuild confidence than to push through frustration.

What about students preparing for tournaments?

Add volume carefully and keep the habit of rest. Tournament players do benefit from more practice, but a sudden jump in workload just before an event tends to backfire. A sensible approach:

• Weeks before. Slightly more tactics and calculation, plus slower practice games with a clock
• Final week. Lighter work: a few puzzles a day to stay sharp, plus a quick look at their opening lines
• Day before. Little or nothing. Rest and sleep help more than a last-minute cram
• After. Review the games together and turn two or three mistakes into the next homework set

The post-event review is the most valuable part. It turns real games into targeted practice, which students tend to care about far more than a generic puzzle set.

How do you set homework for groups and clubs?

Set one shared task and let students work at their own pace. In a group, you can't tailor every set, so the aim is to make one task that works for several levels. A few ways to do it:

• Core plus stretch. Everyone does the core set, keener students try the extra ones
• Tiered sets. Two or three levels of the same theme, handed out by ability
• Pairs. Students set each other positions, which builds understanding and keeps them engaged
• Class challenge. A group target, such as everyone finishing the set by next week, with a small reward

The key is to make checking easy. A tick sheet at the door, or a quick show of hands for "who got the tricky one?", is enough. If your group is large, check a sample each week, not everyone.

How do you set homework for online students?

Make it easy to start without you. Send one link or one file, say exactly what to do and give it a time window. Online students lose the cues of an in-person lesson (a pile of worksheets on the table, a parent at the door), so the instructions have to carry more weight.

Whatever you use, keep the first step to one click. If a student needs to create an account, remember a password and hunt for the right folder, a fair share will not start. Tools that run offline in a browser and need no login remove that barrier.

How do you check homework without spending hours?

Use a quick, low-effort check at the start of every lesson. Two minutes is plenty:

1. Ask "which puzzle beat you?" and look at that one together
2. Ask the student to show their progress screen, a completion count or a tick-box sheet
3. Pick one position from the set and ask them to explain it

You do not need a dashboard, and you do not need to mark every answer. You need the student to know you will ask. That alone changes behaviour.

How do you keep track of what each student has done?

A simple record beats a clever one. A spreadsheet with a row per student and a column per week is enough: theme, amount set, amount done and one line of notes. It takes a minute after each lesson and gives you something concrete to say to parents.

What to note:

• The theme and amount you set
• Whether it was done in full, in part or not at all
• One thing the student found hard
• What you'll set next

If you use a tool that tracks completion for the student, ask them to show you the screen rather than copying numbers across. It saves you time and keeps the responsibility with them.

Printable or interactive?

Offer both if you can. Some students concentrate better on paper, with no notifications. Others love an app that gives instant feedback and hints. Younger students often benefit from paper because there's nothing else on the screen to pull them away. Older students often like the convenience of a phone or laptop.

What role should parents play?

A big one, for younger students. A parent who knows what the task is, how long it should take and when to do it turns homework from a hope into a habit. Give parents a short note (what, how much, when) and tell them it's fine to simply sit nearby. They don't need to know chess.

Can homework help you keep students?

It can, because it makes progress visible. A student who has solved two hundred forks can feel the difference, and so can their parents. Students who stall tend to drift, and homework gives you an early warning: if the work stops coming in, you know there's a conversation to have before the next invoice, not after the student quits.

A few small habits help:

• Celebrate completed sets, not just good results
• Share a short monthly note with parents on what was covered
• Ask students what they enjoyed and what they'd skip
• Rotate formats now and then so it doesn't go stale

What do you do about holidays and breaks?

Lower the bar rather than drop it. A full stop for three weeks usually means restarting from nothing, while a tiny routine keeps the habit alive. Over a break, a good compromise is five minutes a day, or three short sessions a week, with no pressure. Let students choose one fun task, such as a favourite theme or a game against a family member. When lessons restart, begin with a gentle warm-up set so nobody feels they have fallen behind.

Are free puzzle sites enough?

Free puzzle sites are a great source of puzzles and a poor source of structure. The puzzles are good. What is missing is the order: which theme, how many, how hard and when to move on. Students left to choose often drift to easy puzzles or to whatever is fun.

You can absolutely use free sites well if you tell students exactly which theme to filter on and how many to do. What you cannot do is rely on the site to build a curriculum for you.

Should you use a homework platform or a one-time pack?

It depends on what you value. Per-student platforms are polished and often show you live results, but the cost tends to rise with every student you add, and each student needs an account. A one-time pack costs once, works for as many students as you teach and needs nothing from them to sign up, but it won't give you a live dashboard. Students show you their progress instead.

If you have a handful of students and want live data, a platform may suit you. If you teach groups, run a club or want predictable costs, a pack is usually simpler.

What are the most common homework mistakes?

• Setting too much. An ambitious plan that collapses is worse than a modest one that survives
• Never checking. Students notice quickly when nobody asks
• Mixing too many themes. One at a time is easier to learn
• Giving answers too fast. The struggle is where the learning happens
• Treating a missed week as failure. Reset, shrink the task and carry on
• Making it feel like punishment. Homework should feel like part of chess, not a penalty for being a student

What does a simple homework plan look like?

Here is one example week for an intermediate student, built around a single theme. Adjust the numbers to suit the student:

Then, at the start of the lesson, you ask which puzzle beat them and teach from there.

Where does the Learning Library fit in?

Homework is half the job. The other half is the lesson itself. We're building the Chess Coaching Lesson Library, with ready-made lessons and homework for every stage. It is a pre-order for now, at £47 ($63) for everything, rising to £97 ($130) when it is finished. Read how the pre-order works.

Frequently asked questions

How much chess homework is enough?

For most students, ten to fifteen minutes a day on five or six days is a good start. Younger students need less. The right amount is the one the student really does.

What is good chess homework for beginners?

Short, themed puzzles that match the last lesson, such as simple forks or checkmates in one. Keep the task small and the success rate high so beginners build confidence.

How do I check chess homework quickly?

Ask which puzzle beat them, or have them show a progress screen or tick-sheet. A two-minute check at the start of the lesson works better than marking every answer.

Should chess homework be on paper or on screen?

Either, ideally both. Paper helps students who get distracted by screens. Screens help students who like instant feedback. Let students pick when you can.

Are free puzzle sites good enough for homework?

The puzzles are good, but the structure is missing. They work well if you tell students exactly which theme to filter on and how many puzzles to do.

How do I set homework for online chess students?

Send one link or file with exact instructions and a time window, and keep the first step to one click. Tools with no logins remove a common barrier.

Do parents need to know chess to help?

No. They only need to know what the task is, how long it takes and when to do it. Sitting nearby is enough.

What if a student never does their homework?

Find out why, shrink the task, and try a different format. Some students still won't, and that is useful information too.

How do I set homework for a chess club or group?

Set one shared task with a core set for everyone and extra puzzles for keener students. Check with a tick sheet or a quick show of hands rather than marking every answer.

How do I know if homework is too hard?

Skipped days, vague answers and comments like "I didn't understand it" are the signs. Aim for work a student can mostly solve, with a few that stretch them, and change one thing at a time.

Next step

If you want a ready-made year of tactics homework you can hand to every student, see Chess Tactics Mastery: Coach Edition. If you'd rather build your own, the steps above will get you most of the way there.