How to play Up or Down? GOLD, and how to practice so it counts

Updated November 1, 2026 · 5 min read

The game takes a minute to learn. A real chart stops, you call the next move, and the market answers. This guide covers the rules, the settings that matter, and a practice routine that turns rounds into skill.

One round, step by step

1. Pick the question timeframe at the top of the game: 5-minute, 15-minute, 1-hour or 4-hour.
2. Read the chart. Real XAU/USD candles appear, stopped at a random moment between late 2016 and 2026. Everything to the right is hidden.
3. Make the call. Press Buy if you expect price to rise, Sell if you expect it to fall, or Pass if the chart gives you no reason either way.
4. See what happened. The next candles play out, your answer is judged, and the result is added to your record. Press Next for a new chart, or Show 50 more bars to see how the story continued.

On a keyboard you can play without the mouse: ↑ or B to buy, ↓ or S to sell, X to pass, Enter for the next chart, and 1–4 to switch the view between timeframes.

Two ways to judge an answer

Open Settings → Judging to choose.

Close after N candles (the default)

Your entry is the close of the last visible candle. The game compares it with the close N candles later. You can set N to 5, 10, 20 or 40. If you bought and that later close is higher, you are right. This mode trains pure direction, and a coin flip would score about 50%.

TP/SL, based on ATR

This mode works like a real order. The stop-loss sits 1 × ATR(14) away from your entry, and the take-profit sits 1, 1.5, 2 or 3 × ATR away, whichever you choose. Whichever level price touches first decides the result. If neither is touched within 50 candles, the trade closes at the close of the 50th candle.

Two details keep the test honest:

• If a single candle touches both the stop and the target, the stop counts, because a candle does not tell you which came first.
• If a candle opens beyond a level (a gap), you get the opening price, not your level.

Results are shown in R, meaning multiples of the stop distance. A win at 1:2 is +2R and a loss is −1R. With a 1:2 setting you only need to be right a little more than one time in three to come out ahead. The article on win rate and risk-reward shows what random entries score in this mode.

Tools for reading the chart

• View switch. The "View" bar redraws the same moment on another timeframe, so you can check the 4-hour trend before answering a 15-minute question. You still answer and are judged on the question timeframe. A higher-timeframe candle that was still forming at the question time is built only from the data before that moment, so the view never leaks the future.
• Bars shown. Choose 80, 120, 200 or 400 candles. Whatever you choose, you can scroll back as far as that many 4-hour candles, even on the 5-minute chart.
• Moving averages. SMA or EMA with periods 20, 100 and 200, or OFF for a clean chart.
• Drawing tools. Horizontal line, trend line, zone, Fibonacci levels (0, 0.5 and 1) and a pen. Tap a drawing to select it, drag to move it, and press Delete to remove it. Drawings are cleared when the next question starts.

Hide what would give the answer away

By default the game hides dates before you answer and shows only the weekday and time. Remembering "that was the day of the rate decision" is not chart reading. You can also hide prices before answering. Round numbers such as $2,000 or $4,000 matter in real markets, so try both settings and notice how your reading changes.

A practice routine that works

1. Start on the 1-hour or 4-hour chart. Swings are cleaner and a single candle matters less.
2. Name your reason before you click. One short sentence is enough, for example "higher lows above the 20 SMA, buying the pullback". Mark it with a drawing.
3. Pass more often. If you cannot name a reason, pass. The result still shows what would have happened, so you learn from passes too.
4. Review every 30 calls. The "Last 30" panel shows your recent results. Look for repeated mistakes: fighting strong trends, buying right after a big candle, or trading the quiet hours.
5. Switch to TP/SL after about 200 calls. From then on, watch Total R rather than the win rate.
6. Then move down to the 15-minute and 5-minute charts, and check the 1-hour trend with the view switch before every answer.

Reading your record

The record panel shows calls, win rate, current and best streak, and Total R. It keeps a separate record for each timeframe. Give the numbers time. Over 100 calls, pure guessing lands anywhere between about 40% and 60% in 95% of cases, so a win rate means little until you have a few hundred calls. That is why the long-term goal is 1,000.

Your record is stored in your browser on this device only. Clearing the site's data, or pressing Reset records in Settings, deletes it.