Chess Second

Every other tool in the over-the-board corner of this directory is about the game itself - scanning a scoresheet, analysing a position, building a repertoire. Chess Second is about the opponent. It takes the FIDE rating lists, which FIDE publishes monthly and presents about as accessibly as a tax form, and turns them into something a tournament player can actually use between rounds: search a name, see the standard, rapid and blitz ratings, the peak, the chart back to 2001, the tournaments that moved it. National and world rankings come with junior tables, federations and tournaments get their own pages, and a head-to-head view does what its name says. None of this needs an account, and the pages are quick.

The most distinctive thing on the site is /wrapped, a monthly recap of each new FIDE list - who gained most, which records fell, who the player of the month was. It is written rather than generated, credits FIDE for its data and photos, and is the kind of thing a club newsletter would happily link to. That and the lookup are the reasons to bookmark Chess Second today.

The pitch has been moving under the submission, though. The homepage now leads with repertoire, training and opponent prep, all behind a free sign-up that this review did not create, so those features are described here from the site rather than from use: openings built from linked Lichess and Chess.com games, a scouting area, endgame training, a middlegame section marked as coming. The privacy policy cannot decide whether those linked accounts are actually imported or only checked for existence, which is worth fixing before anyone hands it a username. Small inconsistencies on the data side - a World #1 tally that disagrees with itself on the same page - are the kind a young site irons out, and this one is young: the domain dates from September 2026.

For a club or tournament player rated somewhere above 1400 who has ever opened the FIDE site on a phone at 9am trying to work out who they are playing at 10, Chess Second is free, fast and already better at that one job than the official source. The training half is a promise to revisit.