Fog of War Chess - Tips

fyi when you posted link you didn't include the numbers in the url. so others won't find it without searching:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-variants/fog-of-war-chess-tips-123632502

How does this provide different information than the fog that is inevitably two squares in front of the pawn? Paying attention to the fog to know when there’s piece on the fourth rank is important, but you don’t have to click on anything to see that.

(beginners)
To improve at Fog of War, you need to review your games—almost all of them, except those where the opponent just pushes pieces randomly. Reviewing is the best way to build a mental library of tricks and traps. Do it right after the game, while your memory is fresh, and compare what you believed was happening with what actually happened. This teaches Fog of War faster than playing alone.

When reviewing, turn off the fog for both players, go back to move one, and replay the game. Pause whenever you need to analyze a position.

With pawns, you don’t see what is directly in front of them—you only see what they can capture on the diagonals. For a pawn on its starting square (for example, b2 for White), you can’t see what’s on b4 unless you click or hold the pawn and look at the squares it can move to, which are marked with dots. If a square has a dot, you know for sure it is empty.

Let me know if I misunderstood your comment.

Thank you!

(advanced)
One of the hardest parts of Fog of War is remembering pawn positions as the game goes on. You don’t always have time to replay the game to refresh your memory. A simple memory trick helps here: you remember things better when you use more than one sense.

Along with seeing what happens, say it to yourself. The extra audio cue helps lock the information in. For example, say to yourself: “The two center pawns were destroyed,” or “The three pawns on the kingside are gone.”

A short history of Fog of War

Fog of War as an idea is much older than chess variants. The term comes from military theory and is usually linked to Carl von Clausewitz in the early 19th century. He used it to describe the uncertainty commanders face when they don’t have complete information about the battlefield.

The concept appeared in games long before chess adopted it. In 19th-century Prussian war games like Kriegsspiel, players had limited or delayed information about enemy forces. Board games such as Stratego later built entire mechanics around hidden pieces. In modern times, video games—especially strategy and tactics games—made fog of war a standard feature, forcing players to scout, infer, and take risks.

Fog of War in chess is much more recent. Early versions appeared as experimental variants discussed online by hobbyists who wanted to break chess’s perfect-information nature. The goal was to introduce uncertainty, memory, deduction, and deception—skills closer to intelligence gathering than calculation alone.

The variant only became practical once chess moved online. On a physical board, Fog of War is almost impossible to enforce fairly. Online platforms can hide squares automatically, reveal legal moves, and enforce special rules like winning by capturing the king instead of checkmate.

On platforms like chess.com and Lichess, Fog of War gained a following in the 2010s. Players quickly realized this wasn’t just “blind chess,” but a fundamentally different game. It rewards memory, probabilistic thinking, bluffing, and pattern recognition under uncertainty.

Today, Fog of War is less a novelty and more a serious variant. Many strong Fog of War players are not classical masters, and many strong classical players struggle with it at first. The overlap in skills is real—but incomplete. In many ways, Fog of War feels closer to imperfect-information games like poker than to traditional chess.

I'm with Scotch on this point. You wrote:

• "you can’t see what’s on b4 unless you click or hold the pawn and look at the squares it can move to" - this is not quite right. If you click or hold the pawn then you still cannot see what's on b4. Rather, you can see if it's occupied.
• "If a square has a dot, you know for sure it is empty." - Yes, this is exactly correct.

Scotch's point breaks down as:

1. If b4 is greyed out, then it's occupied.
2. If b4 is not greyed out, then it's not occupied.
3. If you click your pawn on a2, you'll see that b4 is not occupied (your point). But you already had that information before clicking on the pawn from point #2.

(for advanced players with great memory)

Remember players and their strategies
Many players—especially beginners and intermediate ones—reuse the same openings and tactics in Fog of War. If you remember a player’s name and style, you may recall their favorite tricks as soon as you see who you’re playing. No one has a perfect memory, but Fog of War pools are small—often around 25 active players—so you’ll face the same opponents multiple times during the same playing session. Paying attention to their openings and habits can help you anticipate their plans in future games. This works best against intermediate players; advanced players tend to vary their tactics and use many different openings.

(for beginners)

Be unpredictable in the openingAvoid classical openings altogether. Develop your pieces in unusual ways—such as knights to g3 or b3—and avoid moving your central pawns early. This makes it much harder for your opponent to guess your plan or locate your king.

(for intermediate players)

Fake your castling

Use pawn moves to mislead your opponent about where your king castled. For example, as White, push g3 and h4 to make it look like you castled kingside, then actually castle queenside behind a weaker pawn shield. You can also surprise people by castling in the middle sometimes—behind pawns like c2, d3, and e2.

(intermediate players)

A Pawn/file Counting Method (intermediate)

This method for figuring out which pawn files are empty late in the game is simple, but it took me a while to discover. It saves a lot of time because you don’t need to replay the game mid-play just to remember where pawns are.

To do this, I count the captured pawns, then count the pawns I can currently see on the board, and deduce how many are missing and in which files. Late in the game, this quickly tells me which pawn files are empty.

For example, if I’m wondering whether any kingside pawns still exist, I count five captured pawns and see three pawns on the queenside. That tells me there are no pawns left on the central or kingside files—no replay needed, and no time wasted.

(advanced players)

Don’t worry about tempo

In Fog of War, losing a tempo usually doesn’t matter. You can move the same piece back and forth to probe your opponent’s setup. For example, I often place a bishop on d3 to check whether the opponent has played g6 to block it. I can often repeat bishop moves, such as d2–e3–f4, just to gather information about the opponent’s position without harming my own.

In classical chess, wasting moves in the opening can cost you the game. In Fog of War, tempo is far less important in the opening and middlegame—though it does matter more in the endgame.

mdalhman summed it up nicely, but I will add a bit of clarification that might help.

What squares are visible to you (i.e., not gray with fog)? Any square to which you can move a piece. So an enemy piece in front of a pawn that prevents movement will be in fog, but you'll know there's a piece there. Clicking on a pawn and seeing the dots doesn't give you any additional information because you already know from the fog whether or not you can move there.

This was confusing to me at first and I even posted on this forum a few years ago because I thought it was a bug that squares diagonal to a pawn were still in fog. If you could capture a piece there, surely you should have "sight" to the square, right? It's not intuitive, but I came to appreciate that the way it's designed is actually superior, because it gives you more information.

Significantly, this allows you to know when you have the ability to capture en passant, as the square diagonally in front of the pawn is no longer in fog. If you're attentive, this lets you know exactly what your opponent's last move was.

#2 said:
“Castling is allowed even if the king is under attack or passes through danger.”
I thought, what that happens, the opponent could capture your king en passant?

Probably thinking of another variant, i know that’s a thing in Drawback and it would make sense if it was in others where illegal moves are allowed.

Why beginners sometimes beat stronger players in Fog of War

Fog of War is a game of calculated risk taking, not certainties. In regular chess, strong players calculate exact lines and avoid moves unless they know they are safe. In Fog of War, you rarely have that luxury. You don’t see everything, so you must act on what is most likely, not on what is guaranteed.

Stronger players often wait for proof. They try to eliminate every risk and protect against rare possibilities. Beginners, on the other hand, are more willing to move forward based on chance. They assume the king is in castled in one of the corners and they act. In Fog of War, that mindset can be an advantage.

You can’t assign exact probabilities here, just like in poker. What matters is having a sense of what usually happens and what almost never does. If a bishop appears on c5, the chance is very high that the e-pawn moved to free it. Technically, it could have come another way—but that chance is so small it’s often not worth playing around.

This is why beginners sometimes beat very strong players, even masters. They take risks and play the chances instead of waiting for certainty. Most of the time, beginners lose to advanced players, but every now and then they do win—and the rush of beating a master is hard to beat!

(beginners)

Hide your king well

Never reveal your king’s position early. Once it’s seen, it becomes a permanent target. If your king is discovered, the battle is half lost if you don’t hide it well again. And hiding it well doesn’t mean moving it just one square. Strong players move the king fast and far, often migrating to a completely different wing, forcing the opponent to lose track all over again.

(intermediate players)

Take more risks when losing

When you are behind, playing safely usually leads to a slow loss. This is the moment to take risks; you have little to lose and everything to gain.

For example, I normally protect my knights because they are excellent hunters in Fog of War. But when I’m clearly losing, i stop playing safe. I guess where the enemy king is likely to be, plan an attack path, and send a knight on a kamikaze mission. This often works, especially when the board is less crowded and there are fewer pieces to block or detect it.

(intermediate)

Initiate Exchanges

Actively look for captures deep in enemy territory. Capturing a piece instantly expands what you can see and gives you valuable information about your opponent’s position.

For example, if rooks are facing each other, don’t wait and let your opponent capture your rook on your back rank. That only reveals your own setup. Instead, capture the opponent’s rook on their back rank (rank 8). This often reveals the locations of their rooks and king, giving you much better information to work with.