Rival Chess: Be the Champion

Play. Climb. Be the Champion.

Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.

Discover your next focus. Train with positions from your own games. A PROMISE TO MY GRANDFATHER. Every Sunday he taught me chess at the kitchen table. He said that one day someone in this family would be world champion. He passed before it happened. The board stayed. Rival Chess is that promise turned into a game. Eight championships, 56 rivals, one title at the end — and a goddess waiting behind the last door. FROM THE STREET TO THE INTERPLANETARY. You start out playing in the square and finish across the board from Caïssa. Every rival is calibrated to your level. Every boss you beat unlocks the next title. Nobody gets a medal for showing up here: you become champion, or you go back and try again. ARCADE CHESS, NOT A SIMULATOR. Pick your fight. Take down the boss. Climb to the next championship. From Tito in the Square to Caïssa the Eternal, every opponent has a name, a face, a way of talking and a real rating — all hand-written, one by one. A win pushes you up. A loss becomes training, and I mean that literally: see below. A 1200 RIVAL BLUNDERS THE WAY A 1200 BLUNDERS. This is the hard part, and it is where almost every chess app falls short. A traditional engine fakes weakness by cutting its search depth: it finds a beautiful tactic and then hangs its queen three moves later. Nobody plays like that. Here the opponents run on our own neural network, conditioned on rating, covering 600 to 2699, trained on millions of real human games. It does not play badly on purpose — it goes wrong in the places a person at that level would go wrong. Thinking time is not random either. It comes from a model trained on 5.6 million real Lichess moves, watching the position, the phase of the game, the clock, whether a threat is in the air, whether it is a recapture. Your rival does not answer on a metronome beat. It stalls exactly where a person would stall. YOUR OWN MISTAKES BECOME DRILLS. No generic puzzles pulled from a database. The app finds the exact instant YOUR game turned — the move where the win slipped away — and hands that position back to you. Same board, same pressure, opponent at the same level. Blundered at 1850? You go back in against an 1850. Now hold it. INSIGHTS Discover your next focus. Train with positions from your own games. Understand your results in plain language, revisit your mistakes and follow your progress. Insights and practice are free; Lifetime opens the full journey. EVERYTHING RUNS ON YOUR DEVICE. No server in the middle, no games of yours wandering around out there, no monthly bill. THE 8 CHAMPIONSHIPS 1. The Street — free and unlimited, no card required 2. The Neighborhood 3. The City 4. The State 5. The National 6. The Continental 7. The World 8. The Interplanetary — the final boss, against Caïssa herself COACHES WHO NOTICE WHAT YOU GET WRONG Three masters guide your drills: The Library Sage, Master Helena and the Sensei. Each one teaches the pattern YOU keep missing, not the generic lesson that suits everybody. The Library Sage is free from day one; Helena and the Sensei come with Lifetime. HOW IT WORKS • You play rivals at your level • The app finds your worst moves on its own • Each one becomes a Survival Drill • You go back into the position and have to hold it to the end WHAT COMES WITH IT • Unlimited games against opponents at your level • 56 rivals spread across 8 championships • Survival Drills pulled from your own games • Full analysis of every game • Separate Bullet, Blitz and Rapid ratings • Title progression, from Street Champion upward • 3 masters to unlock • Boards and pieces to customize • History with replay of everything you have played NO SUBSCRIPTION. Pay once and that is it. No monthly fee, no lives to recharge, no catch. For the promise. For the family. Start now.

  • 4.5
    out of 5
    4 Ratings

Discover the new Insights tab: clear results, your next training focus, performance by game phase and complete practice history. Train positions from your own games and follow your progress.

The developer, Rafael Leite, 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 Linked to You

    The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:

    • Contact Info
    • User Content
    • Identifiers
    • Usage Data
    • Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More

Seller
Rafael Leite
Size
238.2 MB
Category
Board
Compatibility
Requires iOS 15.1 or later.
  • iPhone
    Requires iOS 15.1 or later.
  • iPad
    Requires iPadOS 15.1 or later.
  • iPod touch
    Requires iOS 15.1 or later.
  • Mac
    Requires macOS 12.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
  • Apple Vision
    Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
Languages
English
Age Rating
4+
In-App Purchases
Yes
Copyright
© 2026 Rival Chess. All rights reserved.