About Visualwize

Visualwize is a chess visualization training website created by Louis Holtzhausen.

Many chess players study tactics, openings, and strategy, but still struggle when they need to calculate a few moves ahead. They see the first move clearly, but after two, three, or four moves, the position starts to become unclear.

This is often not just a calculation problem. It is a visualization problem. Visualwize was created to train this skill directly.

Try the Example

Why Visualization Matters

Good calculation depends on your ability to see the board clearly in your mind.

When you calculate, you are not only choosing candidate moves. You also need to picture what the position will look like after those moves are played. If that mental picture becomes unclear, the rest of your calculation becomes unreliable.

This affects many parts of practical chess:

  • calculating variations
  • spotting tactics
  • comparing different moves
  • avoiding blunders
  • planning ahead
  • following forcing lines

Many players practice tactics, but they rarely isolate and train the skill of holding a new position in the mind. Visualwize focuses on that missing skill.

How the Exercises Work

Each Visualwize exercise shows a short sequence of moves with arrows.

You visualize the moves in your mind, remember the position you reached, and then try to find the tactic from that position.

The higher the level, the more moves you need to visualize.

This trains you to:

  • follow move sequences more accurately
  • keep the final position clear in your mind
  • calculate without moving the pieces
  • spot tactics after visualizing a sequence
  • build stronger tactical vision

The arrows make the moves easy to follow, so you do not need to spend your energy reading long notation. Instead, you can focus on the real training task: seeing the board in your mind.

What Makes Visualwize Different

Visualwize is not just another tactics collection.

In a normal puzzle, the position is already in front of you. You only need to find the solution from the diagram.

In a Visualwize exercise, you first have to create the position in your mind. Only then do you try to solve the tactic.

That extra step is important. It trains the skill many players struggle with during real calculation: keeping track of the board after a sequence of moves.

What You Can Expect

If you work through the exercises with full focus, you should gradually become better at seeing positions ahead.

You may notice that:

  • variations become easier to follow
  • tactical ideas become easier to spot
  • you lose track of the position less often
  • your calculation feels clearer and more controlled

Visualwize is not meant to replace normal tactics training. It is a focused training tool for one of the most important chess skills: the ability to see the board in your mind.

At the same time, the exercises are based on instructive tactical combinations, so you can train visualization, calculation, and tactical skill together.

Connection to Chessfox

Visualwize is connected to Chessfox.com, where I publish chess lessons, training guides, and other chess improvement material.