Clearance Chess Puzzles

About clearance puzzles

Clearance involves moving a piece away from a square to open a line, diagonal, or square for another piece — even at the cost of the clearing piece. It is often called a clearance sacrifice when material is given up. The motif appears in both mating attacks and endgame pawn promotions. Clearance puzzles train you to see beyond your current piece placement and to imagine how the position would look if a piece were simply not there. This counter-intuitive thinking — removing your own piece to unlock power — is a hallmark of advanced tactical play. Recognising clearance ideas immediately separates tactical players from those who only see direct captures and checks.

How to train clearance

A clearance is a shape, not a sequence. Once you can spot the shape you will find the move in seconds instead of calculating from scratch, so train for recognition speed: glance, name the pattern, then verify.

Questions

How many clearance puzzles are there?

Enough that you will not repeat them — this set is drawn from a library of over 1,000,000 puzzles taken from real games, graded from easy to hard.

What level is this suitable for?

Children from about age 5 upward, once they know how the pieces move, through to rated tournament players. Start on the easy set and move up when you are solving most of them at a glance.