Lichess analysis board explained: a beginner's tour

The Lichess analysis board is a free chessboard with Stockfish built in: you step through a game, see an evaluation for every position (+ means White is better, − means Black is better), read the engine's best lines, and, after a full computer analysis, get an evaluation graph, the symbols ?!, ? and ?? on your inaccuracies, mistakes and blunders, and an accuracy score for each player. As of October 2026, Lichess lists the board and its engine as unlimited for everyone, with full server analysis by Stockfish 19 for 40 games a day (Lichess features, checked October 27, 2026).

That's the short answer. This guide is the Lichess analysis board explained panel by panel: where each number comes from, what each button does, which keyboard shortcuts save time, and how to read two real positions from my own games. I'm nacsol3, an adult improver who went from 631 to 1385 in rapid on Chess.com, and I use Lichess's board to study games I played on Chess.com. If you've never read an engine number before, our guide on how to read Stockfish analysis covers evaluation and depth in more detail; here we focus on the board itself.

Step 1: open the analysis board

There are three ways in:

1. From a Lichess game you played. Open the finished game and click the analysis button. You'll land on the same board with your moves already loaded.
2. Empty board. Go to lichess.org/analysis. You can play out any line from the starting position or set up a position with the board editor.
3. A game from another site. Download the PGN (the text file with the moves) and paste it at lichess.org/paste. Lichess's import page says you'll get "a browsable replay, computer analysis, game chat, and a shareable link", warns that the imported game can be seen by the public, and suggests a study if you want it private. The "Request a computer analysis" tick box on that page needs a Lichess account.

That third route is how I review my Chess.com games on Lichess. Both of the example positions below come from Chess.com games imported that way.

Step 2: learn the layout

Here's what each part of the board shows. Names are the ones Lichess uses on screen.

The summary area is defined in Lichess's open-source code: it lists the number of inaccuracies (?!), mistakes (?) and blunders (??), the average centipawn loss (how many hundredths of a pawn you lost per move compared with the engine's choice), the accuracy and, in the current code, accuracy by game phase (lila source, roundTraining.ts, checked October 27, 2026).

Step 3: switch on the engine and read it

The local engine is the one in the engine panel. Lichess's keyboard help calls it "local computer analysis" and you toggle it with the switch or the L key (Lichess analysis keyboard help, checked October 27, 2026). It analyses whichever position is on the board, so when you step to a new move, it starts again.

What the panel tells you:

• The evaluation. +1.00 is about a pawn's worth of advantage for White, −1.00 the same for Black. A score like #4 means a forced checkmate in four. The number is always from White's side, so if you played Black, a falling number is good news.
• The depth. How deep the engine has searched. The number climbs while the engine thinks; small changes in the second decimal are normal.
• The lines. Each line starts with a candidate move and shows how the engine expects play to continue. Lichess's engine settings let you show from 0 to 5 lines (the "Multiple lines" slider), and also set search time, threads and memory (lila source, ceval settings, checked October 27, 2026). Three lines is a good default: you see whether the position has one only move or several good ones.
• The best-move arrow. The arrow on the board is the engine's top move. Press A to hide it when you want to find the move yourself first.

Two more tools hide in the shortcuts. Space plays the engine's best move on the board, so you can follow its line one move at a time. X shows the threat: what the other side would play if the side to move could pass. Use it on your own move to answer "what is my opponent threatening right now?" before you look for your own ideas.

Lichess also has cloud engine analysis, listed as unlimited on its features page: for many common positions, a stored deep evaluation can appear immediately instead of waiting for your own device to compute it.

Step 4: request a computer analysis of the whole game

The local engine looks at one position at a time. For a whole game, press Request a computer analysis (on your own games, or by ticking the box when you import a PGN). Lichess runs Stockfish on its servers over every move, and the board fills in:

• The evaluation graph. Big cliffs are the moments where the game changed hands.
• The symbols in the move list. ?! for an inaccuracy, ? for a mistake, ?? for a blunder.
• The summary described above.

How Lichess decides those symbols is documented. Its accuracy page converts each evaluation into a Win%, your chances of winning from that position, with a published formula (Lichess accuracy page, checked October 27, 2026). Lichess's code then labels a move by how much Win% it threw away: 5 percentage points or more is an inaccuracy, 10 or more a mistake, 15 or more a blunder (lila source, Advice.scala, checked October 27, 2026; the code writes these as 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 on a −1 to +1 scale). Because it's about winning chances, losing two pawns of advantage in a position that's already completely won may get no symbol at all. For how this compares with Chess.com's labels, see inaccuracy vs mistake vs blunder.

One honest warning from the same accuracy page: the engine judges whether a move is sound, not how hard it was to find. A ?? on a move that needed a ten-move calculation is not the same failure as a ?? on a hanging piece.

Step 5: use "Learn from your mistakes"

Under the summary there's a Learn from your mistakes button. It takes you back to each position where you went wrong and asks you to find a better move, revealing the answer only when you ask. Lichess introduced it in 2016 and explained that it picks moments by the drop in winning chances rather than raw pawn values (Lichess blog, "Learn from your mistakes", December 22, 2016). The features page lists it as unlimited.

This is the most useful button on the board for beginners. Reading that a move was a blunder teaches you little; finding the right move yourself, in the real position, is what sticks.

Step 6: the explorer, tablebase and your own side lines

• Opening explorer (E). Shows what was played from this position in master games and in the Lichess database, which the features page puts at 6 billion games. There's also a personal explorer that works on any player's games. Use it to see the move where your game left the usual paths.
• Endgame tablebase. With 7 pieces or fewer on the board, the explorer switches to a 7-piece tablebase, which knows the perfect result of the position (win, draw or loss), not just an estimate.
• Side lines. Make any move on the board and it becomes a variation in the move list. Your game stays intact. Shift with the arrow keys jumps between branches.
• Drawing. Right-click (or shift-click) and drag for arrows and circles. Holding Ctrl or Shift makes them red, Alt or Cmd blue, one key from each yellow.

Example 1: the queen move that walked into a discovered attack

November 19, 2025. I'm White, rated 1318, against Ultra_Bang (1320) in a 10-minute game (game on Chess.com). The position was balanced and I moved my queen to a4 to attack the knight on c6.

r . . . k . . r
. p p b q p . p
. . n . p . p .
p . . p . . . .
. . . P . . . .
. . P B P . P .
P P Q N . P P .
. . K R . . . R

What the Lichess board would show you here, step by step:

• The move list marks Qa4 with ??. In my game analysis (Stockfish, depth 18) the evaluation went from +0.66 to −5.79. On Lichess's Win% formula that's about 56% down to about 11%, a drop of roughly 45 points, three times the 15-point line for a blunder. Lichess's own server numbers will differ slightly, but not the verdict.
• The best-move arrow points at e4, a quiet central pawn move.
• The engine line after Qa4 starts with the knight jumping to b4. That uncovers the bishop on d7, which now attacks my queen on a4. This is a discovered attack: one piece moves out of the way and reveals an attack by the piece behind it. The knight also eyes d3 and, a few moves later in the engine line, hops in with check and forks my rooks on f2.
• Trying the move yourself is how you'd catch it: play Qa4 on the board as a side line and the engine's top reply for Black is the knight to b4, with the evaluation dropping to about −5.5 in a fresh check for this guide.

I still won this game, because my opponent didn't find the whole idea. But "Learn from your mistakes" would bring me back to this exact position, and the lesson is simple: when your queen lines up with an enemy piece and a piece behind it, check what happens if the front piece moves.

Example 2: the queen move that pinned my own pawn

April 9, 2026. I'm Black, rated 1235, against hanumateja (1237), also 10 minutes (game on Chess.com). The engine had the position at exactly 0.00.

r . . q . r k .
. . . . p p . p
. . . p . . p .
. N p Q n . . .
P . . . . . . .
. P . . . P . .
. . . . . P P P
. R . . R K . .

This is where multiple lines earn their place. I wanted to attack the knight on b5. But my knight on e5 was defended only by the pawn on d6, and Qd7 put my queen on the same file as White's queen on d5, right behind that pawn. Now the pawn is pinned: it can't move without exposing a more valuable piece behind it. If White's rook takes on e5 and my pawn takes back, White's queen takes mine on d7.

A fresh check of the position after Qd7 for this guide shows exactly that. White's top line, rook takes the knight, is worth about +6.1. The second line is already down near +0.1. When the first line is far ahead of the second, the position has one move that wins, and the panel is telling you your opponent only has to find it. Before Qd7, the engine's top lines for me (Qc8 and Rc8) were both within a few hundredths of 0.00, which means any calm move was fine.

My opponent found it: the rook took the knight and my game analysis put the position at about +6.4. I still came back to win by resignation, but the engine verdict was right. My move lost a piece.

Keyboard shortcuts worth learning

All from Lichess's keyboard help (press ? on the board to see it).

Tip: press Z to hide all the computer analysis while you go through the game on your own first. Guess where you went wrong, then switch it back on and compare.

Common mistakes on the analysis board

• Turning the engine on from move one. You'll just watch numbers. Go through the game yourself first, note the moments you felt unsure, then check them.
• Reading the sign from your side. The evaluation is from White's side. As Black, −2 is good for you.
• Chasing the second decimal. +0.31 versus +0.23 is noise. Look for drops of a pawn or more, or a mate score appearing.
• Copying the engine's top move without the reason. Follow the line with Space or the arrow keys until you see what it wins or prevents.
• Treating accuracy as your level. Accuracy describes one game. Use the ?? moves and Learn from your mistakes instead.
• Forgetting that imports are public. If you don't want a game visible, import it into a study.

How Chess Coach fits in

The Lichess board is an excellent free tool, and it shows you where you went wrong. What it doesn't do is explain why in words. Chess Coach is a connector for Claude and ChatGPT that reviews your finished Chess.com and Lichess games with Stockfish running on our server, picks the two or three key moments, and shows them on a board with a red arrow for the move you played and a green arrow for the better one, plus the evaluation graph. Your assistant then explains each moment in plain words, like the discovered attack above, and you can press "Why?" or ask a follow-up in the same chat. Practice mistakes brings those positions back so you can find the move yourself. The Free plan includes one in-depth review a day, and it never helps with a game in progress. See the beginner's guide to analyzing your games, the Lichess MCP server page or connect Chess Coach to Claude or ChatGPT.

Chess Coach is independent and not affiliated with Chess.com, Lichess, Anthropic or OpenAI.