Listudy blind tactics, and where it stops
Listudy hides moves inside a tactics puzzle. DarkSquares takes the board away a layer at a time, across a whole training ladder.
Checked against Listudy’s own pages on
Listudy is a free, open-source chess trainer with a genuinely good idea in it: its Blind Tactics mode shows you a position, hides the next few plies, and asks you to find the win from the board you are now holding in your head. You choose how many plies get hidden, which makes the difficulty honest and adjustable.
That is one exercise, and it is a puzzle-shaped one. DarkSquares is built around the other question: how do you get from not being able to name a square to playing a whole game without a board. Those are different products that overlap in one square of the grid, and this page is about where the overlap ends.
Feature by feature
| What you are comparing | Listudy | DarkSquares |
|---|---|---|
| Blindfold tacticsClosest thing to a like-for-like row on this page. Listudy's ply slider is a good control and DarkSquares has no direct equivalent of it. | Blind Tactics: hides a chosen number of plies before the puzzle position | Blind puzzle moves and blindfold puzzles at three difficulty tiers |
| Playing a game blindfold | Not offered; the training modes are puzzles, studies and endgames | Full games against Stockfish with the pieces hidden, in the browser and in the apps |
| Getting to blindfold in the first placeThis is the actual difference. Listudy assumes you can already hold a board; DarkSquares is mostly the part before that. | No coordinate or square-colour ladder in the training menu | Square colours, coordinates, quadrants, diagonals, then piece paths, then position memory |
| Partial visibility | Pieceless Tactics removes the pieces entirely, one step | Seven visibility levels, from a fully visible board down to a blank one, with silhouettes and plain disks in between |
| OpeningsListudy wins this outright. DarkSquares does not train openings at all. | Spaced-repetition opening study, plus community studies | Not covered |
| Source code | Published on GitHub | Closed source |
| Price | Free and open source | Free tier with unlimited exercises; optional Pro Lifetime at €39, paid once |
Where Listudy is better
Every comparison written by one of the two products is worth less than it claims. Here is the part of this one that costs us something.
- It is free, with no tier above it, and it is open source, so it cannot be taken away or repriced.
- The hidden-ply slider on Blind Tactics is a cleaner difficulty control than anything DarkSquares exposes for the same exercise.
- It trains openings with spaced repetition, which DarkSquares does not do at all.
- Its puzzles come from the Lichess database, so the supply is effectively unlimited and rated.
Where the two actually differ
A puzzle mode against a curriculum
Listudy's blind work lives inside its tactics trainer: you get a position, some moves are hidden, you calculate. DarkSquares starts several steps earlier, at naming a square's colour in under a second, and ends several steps later, at a full game on a blank board. If you already visualise well, Listudy's mode may be all the drill you need.
Hidden moves against a hidden board
Listudy hides plies. DarkSquares hides pieces, in degrees: fully visible, faded silhouettes, plain disks, nothing. Those train different muscles. Hidden plies train updating a position you were shown; hidden pieces train holding one you were never shown.
Where the session ends
A Listudy blind tactic ends when the puzzle is solved. A DarkSquares blindfold game ends when somebody is mated, which is roughly forty moves of continuous tracking rather than four. Both are worth doing and only one of them is a game.
Choose Listudy if you want free tactical drilling with a blindfold twist, if you also want opening repertoire work in the same place, or if open source matters to you on principle. Nothing on this page is an argument against using it.
Choose DarkSquares if the blindfold part is the point rather than a mode, if you cannot yet name squares without counting, or if what you actually want is to play a full game without a board.
Questions people ask
Is Listudy free?
Yes. Listudy is free and open source, with its source code published on GitHub, and there is no paid tier to compare against.
Does Listudy let you play a full blindfold game?
No. Its training menu covers studies, tactics, blind tactics, pieceless tactics and endgames. Blind tactics hides a number of plies inside a puzzle rather than hiding the board for a whole game.
What is the difference between Listudy's blind tactics and pieceless tactics?
Blind tactics shows a position and hides the moves played from it, so you update the position mentally. Pieceless tactics removes the pieces from the display instead. DarkSquares' visibility levels sit between those two ideas and add the steps that come before both.
Can I use both?
Yes, and it is a reasonable pairing. Listudy for opening repertoire and extra tactical volume, DarkSquares for the visualisation ladder and full blindfold games.
Start at the rung you can actually reach
Seven levels, from naming one square to a full game on a blank board. Free, no card.
How this was checked
Every claim about Listudy on this page was read off the pages below on . Store prices are US storefront prices and change without notice; check the listing before buying.
Listudy is a product of Listudy (open source) and is not affiliated with DarkSquares. Product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to identify the products being compared. Found something wrong? Tell us and we will fix it.