Chess Doctrine logo chessdoctrine.comYour One Stop Chess Website

Intermezzo chess puzzles

Intermezzo chess puzzles drill one reflex: pause before the reply your opponent is waiting for and look for a forcing move to slip in first, then finish the original idea a tempo or a pawn ahead. Solve enough of them and the routine recapture stops feeling automatic, which is exactly the moment the in-between move starts showing up on its own.

Keep training

More tactics to drill next.

All tactics puzzles Fork puzzles Pin puzzles Skewer puzzles Discovered attack puzzles Sacrifice puzzles Deflection puzzles Hanging piece puzzles X-ray puzzles Double check puzzles Trapped piece puzzles Advanced pawn puzzles Attacking f2 and f7 puzzles Attraction puzzles Capturing the defender puzzles Clearance puzzles Collinear move puzzles Defensive move puzzles Discovered check puzzles En passant puzzles Exposed king puzzles Interference puzzles Kingside attack puzzles Promotion puzzles Queenside attack puzzles Quiet move puzzles Zugzwang puzzles
Chess notation cheat-sheet (for new readers)

Pieces: K king · Q queen · R rook · B bishop · N knight · (a pawn move has no letter)

Actions: x takes · + check · # mate · O-O short castles · O-O-O long castles · e8=Q pawn promotes to queen

Annotations: ! good move · !! brilliant · ? mistake · ?? blunder

The pause before you take back

The whole motif lives in one half-second of doubt. Your opponent captures, your hand drifts toward the recapture, and the puzzle is asking you to stop there and check for a forcing move you can insert first. That inserted move, the intermezzo (you will also see it called a zwischenzug or in-between move), is what wins the tempo. The recapture almost always still works a move later.

So the solving question is not what an intermezzo is, it is where to spend the pause. After any capture in these positions, scan in this order: a check you can give, a capture that wins more than you are about to lose, a hit on the queen or a loose piece. If one of those exists, the move you owe can wait. If none does, take back and move on. Training that order, capture lands then forcing-move sweep, is most of what separates solvers who find the in-between move from solvers who recapture on reflex and never see it.

Three shapes the in-between move takes

Across this set the trick keeps reappearing in three recognizable shapes, and learning to name them at the board speeds up the search.

Insert a check. Instead of retaking, you give check. The opponent has to answer, and only then do you collect the piece, now a move richer. Watch for exposed kings and open lines toward them the instant a trade starts; that is your first read every time.

Insert a bigger threat. A non-check move that attacks the queen, a rook, or an undefended piece does the same job, because the opponent must deal with it before saving whatever you were going to take. Hunt for loose pieces on the board before you commit to the recapture.

Flip the trade as the defender. Sometimes you are the side expected to recapture, and an in-between move turns the exchange around, rescuing your own piece or grabbing the opponent's instead. Plenty of positions here put you in that chair, so read every capture from both sides.

Making the pause stick under pressure

Spotting the idea in a calm puzzle is one thing; keeping the habit when a trade lands in your own game is the harder part, and the drill is built for that. Counting is what makes the pause trustworthy. An in-between move only holds up when its threat outweighs the move you still owe, so the practice rep is to compare the two threats before you trust the insert, not after.

Use the rating slider to set the difficulty where you miss roughly one position in four; that is the band where the in-between checks start surfacing before you consciously look for them. When you stall, the first hint names the motif and the second points at the piece, the third gives the move, so you can train the recognition without being handed the move. Every position is drawn from real games, free to solve from about 400 up to 2400 with no account, which means you can run intermezzo reps until the pause before the recapture becomes the default rather than the exception.

FAQs

How do you spot an intermezzo before recapturing?
Build a fixed pause. The moment a capture lands and you feel the urge to take back, sweep for forcing replies first: a check, a capture that wins more than you are losing, a hit on the queen or a loose piece. If one exists, the recapture can usually wait a move while you cash the in-between move.
When solving a puzzle, is the in-between move always a check?
Often, because a check forces an immediate answer, so it is the first thing to look for. But any move whose threat outweighs the reply you still owe works too, such as hitting the queen or an undefended rook. In practice, scan checks first, then larger captures and threats.
Why do players miss the in-between move so often?
Because a recapture feels automatic. The eye sees the piece taken and reaches to take back without sweeping for a stronger forcing move first. Almost all the skill is in training the pause before the recapture, which is the one habit these puzzles rep over and over.
What happens if the in-between move is not forcing enough?
The opponent ignores it and finishes their own idea, and you have spent a move instead of gaining one. That is the most common way to fail these puzzles, so before you insert, confirm the threat is at least as large as what you set aside, usually a check or an attack on a bigger piece.
Are these intermezzo puzzles free?
Yes. Every position is drawn from real games, so the full trainer is free with no account required.