Chessward
Learn chess: lessons, puzzles
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
44 lessons, 20,635 rated puzzles, eight kinds of riddle and ten opponents. A coach that tells you why a move was wrong, not just that it was. Works offline.
Chessward teaches chess. It starts with which way the pawns move and finishes with how to calculate a line, and every lesson is played out on the board rather than read.
FORTY FOUR LESSONS
Seven stages. First moves, the tactics that win pieces, checkmate patterns, openings, endgames, positional judgement, and the habits that stop you losing games you should win.
20,635 PUZZLES THAT FOLLOW YOU
Every puzzle you solve or miss moves your rating, and the next one is chosen near it. You carry a separate rating for each tactical theme, so if you see pins but miss deflections, you get deflections.
EIGHT KINDS OF RIDDLE
Positions where the obvious move is the wrong one. Promote to a knight instead of a queen. Win with a move that gives no check and takes nothing. Find the stalemate when you are lost.
TEN OPPONENTS
From one that leaves pieces hanging to one that will beat most club players. Each unlocks when you beat the one below it. They play weakly by choosing plausible moves rather than by thinking shallowly, so their mistakes are the ones a human of that strength actually makes.
A COACH THAT EXPLAINS
After every game, every move is checked against what the engine would have played. Not a score. A reason, in words: which piece you left undefended, what the refutation was, and what the pattern is called. Then it feeds that pattern back into your practice.
NO ACCOUNT, NO SERVER
Everything runs on your device. There is no account to make, nothing is uploaded to us, and all of it works in airplane mode.
GAME CENTER AND THE GAMES APP
Optional. Sign in to Game Center and your puzzle rating, puzzles solved, lessons finished and opponents beaten go on leaderboards, with thirteen achievements to earn. They count what you have already done, so signing in later loses nothing. Start today's puzzle, a lesson or a game straight from Apple's Games app.
ON EVERY SCREEN YOU ALREADY LOOK AT
A fresh puzzle each day on the Home Screen and on the Lock Screen, and on iOS 27 a tall widget that gives the board room. Control Center buttons open today's puzzle, your lessons or a game. Search Spotlight for a lesson, a fork or a skewer, and it opens that lesson. Ask Siri for today's puzzle, your next lesson or a game, and it opens straight there. Built for iPhone and iPad, with the board sized for each.
FREE, WITH MORE
The free plan covers the rules and the tactics that win pieces: fifteen lessons, eight puzzles a day, two riddle sets and three opponents, supported by ads that never appear inside a lesson or while you are solving.
Chessward Plus unlocks all 44 lessons, unlimited puzzles, all eight riddle sets, all ten opponents and the full coaching review, and removes ads. It is an auto renewable subscription, monthly or yearly. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation. It renews automatically for the same period and price unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the period ends, and you can manage or cancel it any time in your Apple Account settings.
Privacy Policy: https://marsstudio.app/chessward/privacy
Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Puzzles selected from the Lichess open database, released into the public domain under Creative Commons CC0. The chess engine was written for this app.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
• Game Center: four leaderboards and thirteen achievements, counted from the progress you already have, so nothing is lost by signing in later. Start today's puzzle, a lesson or a game from Apple's Games app.
• Control Center: add buttons that open today's puzzle, your lessons or a game.
• On iOS 27, a tall Daily Puzzle widget gives the board room.
• Search Spotlight for any lesson by name to open it.
• The Daily Puzzle widget now draws the whole board. Before this update it showed only part of it.
• Your day streak now counts every day you practise. A solved puzzle, a finished lesson or a game keeps it going; opening the app on its own does not.
• Every puzzle you solve or miss now moves your rating. Before this update, only the first puzzle of each visit was counted.
• Tap the Daily Puzzle widget, or ask Siri to practise chess, to open today's puzzle and play it.
• iPad: the Solve board is much larger when you hold it upright, and lessons put the board beside the words when you hold it sideways.
• Larger text sizes now fit on the Solve and You screens.
• After you review a game, the patterns behind your mistakes now steer the puzzles you practise next.
• When the coach says a move allows mate, the number of moves is checked with a full search before it is shown.
The developer, Atchutarao Killamsetty, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Used to Track You
The following data may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies:
- Identifiers
- Usage Data
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Identifiers
- Usage Data
- Diagnostics
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Atchutarao Killamsetty
- Size
- 8.6 MB
- Category
- Board
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 18.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 18.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 18.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 15.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 2.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Contains
Advertising
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Plus Monthly $3.99
- Plus Yearly $24.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 MARS Studio
