How to Play Chess Against Yourself (And Learn From It)

Playing both sides feels like cheating your way to a draw. Here's how to break your own bias, rotate the board, and make a solo game actually teach you something.

There is a version of playing yourself that teaches you nothing, and for a long time it was the only version I knew.

I'd set the board up on my kitchen table, decide White had a plan, and then move Black around like a well-mannered extra whose job was to let the plan work. White would build up a lovely little attack. Black would defend just badly enough to lose. I'd sit back feeling clever, and I'd have learned exactly nothing, because I had watched my favorite idea win in a mirror I was holding myself.

That's the whole trap of solo chess, and almost nobody names it. So let me argue the one thing this piece is about: playing against yourself only works if you deliberately break your bias toward one side. Otherwise you're not playing two players. You're playing one player and a hostage.

Why I still play both sides at my kitchen table

When there's no opponent around, this is the closest thing I've found to reading two minds at once. Done honestly, it forces you to hold both plans in your head at the same time — the attack you want to land and the defense that would stop it. That second half is the part most of us never practice, because in a real game the opponent does it for us, and we resent them for it.

So I keep coming back to the kitchen table. Not because it's a substitute for a real game — it isn't, and I'll get to that — but because it's the one setting where I'm forced to argue against myself and mean it.

If you're newer to the board and some of the ideas below feel a step ahead, start where I did and come back. And if you're still shaky on how each piece actually moves, that's worth nailing first — you can't referee a fair game against yourself if you're unsure whether a move is even legal.

The Endgame Journal collects our writing on openings, tactics, endgames, and the habits that separate players who improve from players who plateau. Every article is written by people who teach chess, not by a content farm.

How to Play Chess With Yourself (And Learn From It) | Endgame Society