Chess Openings Wizard 4+

I’ve had trouble deciding whether this should be rated four or five stars. The case for five stars is that it does exactly what I need it to do and very well. It’s the ideal coach for someone trying to improve at chess. I’ve bought one of the ebooks and been adding variations to it. I like the training that it offers, and I think it’s helpful that it can access a chess engine running on a Mac or PC and show results.

The case against five stars is that I’m dissatisfied with the overall look and feel. I’ve written to the developer with feedback and suggestions, and I’m encouraged that he’s not trying to defend how it looks. He agrees with the feedback and asked me to watch for future versions that will become more iPad-like; he was concentrating on functionality for this first version.

The basic functionality of this is fine. It does what it’s supposed to do, and does it better than most other apps you’ll find. The biggest advantage it has is in how all the notes and evaluations you have are attached to the actual position, not the move list. This means it doesn’t matter if you arrive at the position from a different move order, it will connect you to all the notes you previously made about that position.

But there are gotchas:

There’s no flexibility in the layout. Among other things, this means if you want to write a text note about the position, the edit box it opens obscures most of the position you want to write about. Being able to do simple things like resize and/or relocate the board (or edit box) on screen would fix that.

It fails to take real advantage of the cloud. You can’t work with or directly store files in the cloud. You have to pass everything through Dropbox. This adds an extra process that complicates sharing data between phone and tablet, for example. (“Did I upload those changes to Dropbox from my phone? Is the latest version on my tablet or my phone, or in Dropbox?”) just giving it the normal iOS files interface would fix that.

It’s a useful tool, made a little less useful by some less than optimal design decisions. But if you don’t mind having to create a Dropbox account just to transfer data between devices (my biggest issue with it) and you can work effectively with the developer’s choice for screen layout, it’ll help you succeed.

Not only do I make my opening books, I also make data bases for combinations and endgames and transfer from Mac. I keep them small so they only take about ten minutes in training mode. That way I can do them on break. It is a good way to stay sharp when you can’t play games. It is also a good way to keep track of the off beat openings that seem to be played more often to stay out of book. It is also a great way to keep track of your correspondence games.