Chess - Play & Learn 4+

Checkmate!

I’ve been using this Chess app for about three or four years. It has a lot of additional features like tactics puzzles, videos, and preset predicaments to challenge you and help you set up future moves to create the best situation for your pieces. There is also a play-by-play review of your games which critiques your moves and tells you what you could’ve done better. A couple things that need improvement though. Often the app will fail to notify me when it’s my turn after my opponent has moved, requiring me to open the app and navigate to my active games to manually check if it is my turn. The other issue is that sometimes I will try to start a new game with a friend with the “Play A Friend” option and the app opens the “active connection countdown” when I’m not trying to play a live game. I’m sure there is a way to create a new game with a friend without creating an active challenge, but I am not sure how. If this feature exists, it just needs to be integrated in an easy to find menu. (This review is based on my use from a Samsung Galaxy S5).

EDIT: I have an iPhone X now and I am able to successfully use the “Play A Friend” option to create a daily game without the app opening the “Active Connection Countdown” so the issue I stated previously may already be resolved.

App does not show the entire screen on iPhone.

I’ve set the display to normal and not zoomed. I still can’t set the last file or the check box to insert a move. It is useless on an iPhone and almost certainly an issue with the app not the iPhone iOS. Also some of the puzzles have more than one solution and you get knock down many points for choosing the best solution. There needs to be a way to submit correction and get those points back.

I got a response from the de eloped stating it was the zoom setting on my iOS. That was the first thing I checked and it had no effect on the functioning of the app. I poured over al the online comments and tried everything I could find on the topic, including reviewing many other settings. The iPhone app does not work and I do not think it related to IOS. My hunch is it’s a problem with the app. Which is unfortunate because I can’t bring my iPad or desktop or laptop with me everywhere. I can typically bring my phone.

Fortunately the puzzles are sized right. Even those have a problem on the small screen as I hit the wrong button and it skips to the next puzzle and does not allow you to return to the one you were working on.

Developer Response ,

Hello, we're sorry to hear the problem is persisting! If your iPhone display is not in zoom mode and the app display is still disrupted, please write to us at support@chess.com for assistance. We'd also be happy to help with any puzzle issues, since all puzzles should have only one solution.

Lots of features but not able to give feedback

Hi there, been playing on the app for about a month and started to really like it so looked at the memberships and there’s 3 levels ... $30, $50, and $80 (I believe) for a year, provided you pay upfront and not month by month. I was like ok I get it... there’s lots of features so you have to pay for more of them. Well that’s all good, I get that.

My main issue is with the puzzles that sometimes the “opponent” player doesn’t make the best move so you can’t actually solve the puzzle correctly unless you guess they will do the wrong thing. Solved a puzzle today and I would’ve gotten it right however the opponent made the worse move of their two moves and thereby I made the wrong move because I predicted the opponent would obviously make the best move. Please creators/admins fix this issue. It’s really not the way the puzzles should function. If you fix this I will gladly change my rating to 5 stars since that’s my main issues. Also I couldn’t find anywhere in the app to report this.

But secondly to advertise their “videos” to watch to learn and improve in a notification or have it ever present on the main menu is really annoying when you can’t even watch the whole video because you don’t have the most expensive membership. I don’t like that. Just an annoying paywall situation where I already paid for the app.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your review. We believe our training services are worth the cost since players can make great improvements in their game. You can test these features with a free 7-day trial! Basic members still can access 3 puzzles, one lesson per week and one game report per day among other features, including ChessTV! Games will always be free. :)