Elo Maxing works through the motifs one at a time, from forks and pins to deflections, back-rank mates and rook endgames, and keeps a skill graph of how reliably you solve each. Three puzzles in four come from your weakest motifs, so practice goes where it is worth most instead of wherever the random puzzle lands; the fourth keeps every other motif's rating current.
Every motif carries its own rating, and every solve moves that motif's number rather than only your overall one. In your first sessions Elo Maxing works through the motifs to measure each of them, so the picture fills in a track at a time.
Once it has a reading, most of your puzzles come from the motifs you are weakest at, so practice goes where it is worth most. The rest come from everything else, which keeps the whole graph current: every motif goes on being tested, so each rating stays a live reading rather than a snapshot from weeks ago.
A motif is scored on clean solves: first move right, no hint. That is a harder bar than simply finishing a puzzle, and it is the one that reflects recognising a pattern rather than working it out. A track stays unscored until you have attempted it a few times, so an early lucky run does not read as mastery.
A rating with a question mark beside it is provisional. The number is there, but it is still moving. It settles as you attempt that motif more, and hovering the mark tells you how close it is.
Alongside the motifs there are four calculation tracks, for one move, short, long and deep combinations, rated on exactly the same scale. They answer a different question. A motif asks whether you know the pattern; these ask how many moves ahead you can still hold it.
Every puzzle has a depth, so unlike a motif these are measured on every solve, and they are the first part of the graph to settle. They are a reading, not a target. Being 1800 at forks and 1450 at deep combinations says something no single rating can: you know the pattern, and you lose it when the line gets long.
A wrong move ends the puzzle. The answer is played out on the board and the next position loads. There is no second attempt and no escalating hint, because the first mistake has already settled the result: it is what the motif is scored on, and dwelling on a puzzle you have lost only costs you the session.
A session is ten puzzles. Ten because coaching guidance lands between six and twelve carefully solved positions in one sitting, and because grinding a hundred quickly is worse than twenty with attention, because pattern recognition degrades as you tire.
At the end you get a medal, scored on how many you solved clean rather than on rating gained. Rating is a poor measure here because a correctly rated player nets close to zero by definition, so it would make the medal either trivial or unreachable. Clean count is the part you control, and the difficulty is already matched to you.
Every finished session moves you one level. Levels are grouped into eight tiers, Ember through Spark, Flare, Lantern, Beacon, Halo, Aurora and Zenith, and the tiers lengthen as you climb: Ember is four sessions, Zenith is fourteen. Sixty-four levels, six hundred and forty puzzles, from the first spark to the summit.
Past the summit the names begin again and the cycle number rises. Ember II sits above Zenith I, because the level underneath it is higher and the level is the part that never resets. The road goes on being drawn as far as you climb it.
Elo Maxing improves by accumulation. Every puzzle is recorded in full: the motif it belonged to, whether you solved it clean, how long you took, and what it moved, so each solve is another reading rather than a one-off score.
Early on the picture is broad: every motif available at your level measured a few times each, enough to rank but not to trust in detail. As the count builds, the ratings tighten, the question marks come off, and the ranking stops shuffling on a single miss. The aim gets better with it: the weakest three become the genuinely weakest three rather than the three that happened to go badly on Tuesday.
And it keeps moving. Bring a motif up and it leaves the focus, the next weakest takes its place, and the practice follows. The longer you use it the sharper the reading and the better aimed the work, which is the whole point of keeping a graph rather than a single number.
Motif availability depends on rating. Pins are rare in beginner puzzles and common in master ones; back-rank mates are the reverse. Tracks only appear once there are enough puzzles at your level to train them properly, and they close again once your level outgrows them.
Elo Maxing reads and writes the same puzzle rating as Puzzle Training and the Daily Puzzle. One number across all three, not a separate score for this mode. Solving here moves the rating those pages show, and a rating earned there arrives here already settled. The motif ratings sit underneath it and are Elo Maxing's own.
A real session puzzle worked through, and how Elo Maxing fits with other puzzle training: train the tactical motifs you actually miss.
Puzzle Training serves random puzzles at your rating. Nothing it learns about you changes what you see next. Elo Maxing measures each motif separately and picks the next puzzle from the result, so the two differ in what decides the puzzle rather than in the puzzles themselves.
A motif is a pattern: a fork, a pin, a back-rank mate. A calculation track is how far ahead the solution runs, from one move to deep combinations. Motifs are what the next puzzle is chosen from; calculation is measured on every solve, because every puzzle has a depth whether or not it was the thing being trained.
No. It uses your Lumichess puzzle rating, which starts at 1500 and moves as you solve. Your Chess.com and Lichess accounts are not involved.
A new rating is uncertain, so it is allowed to move further per puzzle until it finds your level. As it settles the steps get smaller on their own.
That the rating is still provisional. It appears next to your puzzle rating and next to any motif whose number is still swinging, and it comes off once the swing narrows.
No. You can leave at any point and the solves already logged are kept; the session picks up where you left it. The medal is only awarded once ten are done.
No. A wrong move ends the puzzle and the answer is played out, so there is nothing to take and nothing to cost you. It still counts as a puzzle in the session.
Yes. Every solve moves a rating that belongs to you and the whole graph is kept against your account, so there is nowhere to put a session otherwise.