SocialChess • Online Chess ١٢+

Bar none. No annoying ads, you're simply restricted on some options if you don't pay the $7.99 annual subscription (for stats tracking, customizable boards, 100 games at once instead of 5, etc), a great value but not at all necessary for the more casual player.

You can play locally, and for MP can choose between slow or fast games. While I haven't seen a huge amount to choose from I've never been left in want of one, and they try to match you up against those with similar stats. You can play a move once a day, three, or five days (or however soon the other player responds), or play a fast game with an adjustable time limit among other settings. You can chat (text) and rewind or forward your moves to analyze strategy while playing. The UI and presentation are also streamlined and pleasing to deal with.

If you have any interest in chess give this app a shot....you only have everything to gain! Highly recommended.

Unfortunately there are a lot of cheaters on this platform! For example, don’t play with this person called mistermaster from Iran who has elo score around 2174. He has software that can freeze his clock. I had this one game with him, he had 0.9 seconds when I had 28 seconds left, and we moved at the same speed. His 0.9 seconds never went down for many moves! It kept glitching and glitching and stayed at 0.9 seconds for a while. That is impossible with human physics. At the end of course I lost due to time because apparently having 28 seconds cannot beat someone with 0.9 seconds. My whole 28 seconds went to 0 while his 0.9 seconds lasted till the end, and he had 0.1 second left (how convenient lol). If anyone watches that game, they would call that absolute bogus. I hope the developer can ban this cheater. I notice that some people also cheat with computer, every move is literally using the same time like he doesn’t think lol, extremely consistent like a robot. I’m sure many players met with those before. I reported one because I played about 20 games with that person to prove it. Of course next day I saw his account get banned ha! Feel great when cheaters get punished. Honestly it really took all the fun away when there are people like that. Come on, the whole point of chess is to have fun and play fair!

A really good chess engine with a lot of features to it. You can tell that the creator of the app cares about chess a lot and has built the app around what most advanced players want. Things that I love are the SUBMIT button after every move. It’s annoying at first since you’re not used to it, but once you do, it’ll save your victory infinitely more times than it’ll cost you it. If it really bothers you, then you can turn it off in the Options menu, but I don’t recommend it. Also, there are no ads of any kind and no submitting personal information except run of the mill login info. He gets his support from players buying the PREMIUM version of the app, but the free has plenty of features as well.

Somethings that I don’t like are if you start a SLOW game (which takes days to play), you have to wait at least 12 hours to cancel a game. Lame. Also, you can move one move ahead of time while your opponent is thinking (the piece won’t actually move until your opponent moves), but once you do there’s no undoing it unless you premove another piece. That’s a fairly new feature though so perhaps there is a way that I’m not aware of. Premove is still an awesome feature though! Just be sure. Overall, the app has got to be one of the best you can get. I’ve been using it for years now and it’s only getting more addicting.