Lichess AI Coach: Get Personal Coaching From Your Lichess Games

Updated October 2026 · 7 min read · Every position checked with Stockfish

Lichess's analysis board is excellent and free. Its limit is that it judges moves, not players. It tells you move 23 was a blunder. It won't tell you that you blunder most between moves 20 and 30, mostly in rapid, mostly with Black. That second kind of information is what moves your rating. This guide covers what Lichess already gives you and what an AI coach adds on top. It also shows how to set one up and get a useful answer in your first session.

1. Use what Lichess already gives you for free

Before adding anything, know what you have. On any finished Lichess game you can request a computer analysis. Stockfish then:

• marks each inaccuracy, mistake and blunder
• draws an evaluation graph
• shows an accuracy figure for both players
• offers Learn from your mistakes, which lets you retry the critical moments of that game

Lichess also has an Insights page that charts your results by opening, phase and other filters. It's worth a look, but you have to know which question to ask it.

All of this is strong for reviewing one game. If you've just lost and want to know where it went wrong, the Lichess analysis board is enough. Our guide on how to analyse your chess games shows a quick routine for it.

2. Know what an AI coach adds (and what it doesn't)

An AI coach does not use a stronger engine. Lichess runs Stockfish, and so do most coaching apps. The difference is what happens to the engine output:

• Across games, not within one. It finds the mistake you make every week, not the one you made today.
• In plain language. You can ask "why do I keep losing with Black?" and get an answer about your games, not a general lecture.
• Into training. Your own blunders become puzzles and drills, so you practise the exact positions you get wrong.

What it won't do is play the games for you or replace your own calculation. For a wider comparison with human coaching, see what an AI chess coach is.

3. Connect your Lichess account (username only)

Lichess games are public, so a coaching app only needs your username. It never needs your password. If an app asks for your Lichess password, don't use it.

How Chessy helps: you enter your Lichess username in the app on iPhone, iPad or Android. Chessy imports your games and runs Stockfish on them automatically. You don't need to upload PGNs or request analysis game by game. If you also play on Chess.com, you can connect that account too.

Give it a decent batch of recent games before drawing conclusions. One bad evening tells you about your mood. A few weeks of games tells you about your chess.

4. Read the patterns before the individual games

Most players open the app and jump straight to their latest loss. Look at the summary first, because the patterns tell you where to spend your time. Check these in order:

• Blunder rate. How often you drop material outright. At 600–1500 this is usually the biggest leak.
• Win rate by opening. One line where you score badly is a quick fix.
• When results drop. Look for a move-number range or a time of day where your play falls apart.
• Accuracy over time. Is it trending up, flat or down?

Opening patterns are often the easiest win. If you keep losing quickly as Black, the cause may be a well-known trap you fall into every time. Here is one:

Or you may be the one who goes pawn-grabbing as White and walks into a trap:

One game like this looks like bad luck. Ten in your history is a pattern, and you can fix it in an afternoon.

5. Ask specific questions about your own games

A coach chat is only as useful as your question. "How do I get better?" gets a generic answer. These get useful ones:

• "Which opening loses me the most rating as Black?"
• "Do I blunder more in the middlegame or the endgame?"
• "Show me games where I lost a piece in the first 15 moves."
• "Why did my rapid rating drop last month?"

How Chessy helps: the AI coach answers from your imported games, and the moves it suggests are checked by the engine. You get concrete positions, not invented lines.

When it points to a game, replay the critical moment on the board. Work out what you missed before you look at the engine move. The classic example of a costly greedy capture:

6. Train on your mistakes, not random tactics

Lichess puzzles are a great free resource. They come from other people's games, though. Puzzles built from your own blunders hit the patterns you actually miss, in the openings and structures you actually play. Chessy builds these from your imported games. Our guide to chess puzzles from your own games explains why this works better.

If hanging pieces top your mistake list, pair the puzzles with a fixed blunder check before every move. The method is in how to stop hanging pieces.

7. Run a weekly loop

Coaching works when it repeats. A simple routine:

• Play your normal games on Lichess during the week.
• Review the weekly summary: what improved, what leaked.
• Pick one thing to work on, such as one opening line, one tactic type or one time-management habit.
• Train it with puzzles from your own games for 10–15 minutes a day.
• Check next week whether that number moved.

Chessy's weekly AI coaching report is built around this loop. Even without it, one focus a week beats fixing everything at once.

Common mistakes

• Treating the AI coach as a stronger engine. The engine underneath is usually the same Stockfish Lichess uses. The value is in the patterns and explanations, so spend your time there. Don't re-check single moves you could analyse on Lichess for free.
• Giving your password to an app. Lichess games are public. Any legitimate coaching tool only needs your username. Never type your Lichess password into a third-party app.
• Judging from five games. A handful of games is mostly noise. Let a few weeks of games import before deciding that an opening or time control is your problem.
• Reading insights and changing nothing. Knowing your blunder rate is useless unless you train against it. Turn every insight into one concrete drill for the week.
• Asking vague questions. "How do I improve?" gets a generic answer. Ask about a specific opening, phase, time control or result, and the coach can point at real games.

FAQ

Lichess already gives you a world-class engine for free. What most players lack is someone to look across their games and say "this is the thing costing you rating". Connect your Lichess username and let a few weeks of games import. Then pick one pattern to fix this week. That's the whole method.

Sources

• Lichess analysis board — What Lichess's free per-game analysis offers
• Lichess: how accuracy is computed — How Lichess's accuracy figure works
• Lichess puzzles — Comparison with puzzles built from your own games
• Stockfish — The engine behind both Lichess analysis and AI coaching apps
• Chessy: How to analyze your chess games — Single-game review routine