Chess Arsenal
| Category | Price | Seller | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Games | $1.99 | Brian Salomon | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
Organize and memorize your opening knowledge.
Chess Arsenal puts you in command of a customized opening repertoire. Enter your favorite systems from books, update them as you like with trends in Grandmaster games, and revise your lines between rounds at your next tournament. Then train to memorize your openings with targeted quizzes. The right answers are based on personal preference, not popularity or the statistical decisions of computers. Find what works for you and out-prepare your opponents!
Repertoire Features:
* Enter opening variations and specify key moves you want to play.
* Provide alternative moves for when you choose to vary your lines.
* Name your openings for refined training.
* Easily expose gaps in your repertoire.
* Build lines for White and Black without switching contexts.
* Record annotations (!, ??, ?!, etc.) and take notes.
* Import/Export PGN files via iTunes or email.
Training Features:
* Take random quizzes from your repertoire or filter for specific lines.
* Train black, white, or both sides.
* Repeat failed quizzes until you get them right.
* Jump to the repertoire screen to review forgotten answers.
* Find your best and worst results sorted by percentage correct.
* Identify opening weaknesses for further study.
** Don’t be caught off guard at the board. The best time to prepare is before the game! **
Fill Chess Arsenal with your favorite openings and all their side-lines. Tell it which response you would play in a tournament. These moves come from your own research, not the app, so you are building a truly personalized opening repertoire. Improve your organization by naming openings. These can be chess names (“Sicilian Defense”) or custom groups (“Bob’s Opening”); it’s up to you!
Do you have a standard response to 1. e4, but change it against a particular player? Enter both moves into your repertoire and add a comment to explain the alternative.
Switch to training mode and your openings are played back until a key position is reached. Do you remember the move you prepared? Train against your entire database or focus on specific openings by using the quiz filter.
Identify openings to study by reviewing your training results. Feeling confident with certain moves? Tell Chess Arsenal to skip them while training and focus on more challenging lines.
* PGN Import/Export *
Chess Arsenal supports the popular Portable Game Notation (PGN) format used by most chess software. Import PGN files via iTunes or choose “Open in Chess Arsenal” within other apps. These can replace or be merged into your repertoire. Export your repertoire to PGN via email attachment or iTunes (drag and drop files with Apps->File Sharing->Chess Arsenal). Exports contain all the moves you looked at, with your repertoire moves marked in comments.
To follow the app, visit the support page!
Reviews
Import coming soon I hope
ZapFatty
I wish I can import pgn files. The interface and design is great. Extremely simple. Perfect for teaching. I have a few iPads and iPhones, and until this has import, I can't really use this for teaching. But it looks promising.
June 2014 Update Crash
mqwendland
The update makes this sorely needed chess app even more functional by adding the ability to name openings and variations, then disaggregate the results accordingly. Unfortunately, when you click on "Results" it crashes immediately. I'm sure it will get fixed. Other than that it does what it says.
No stored openings do not buy
Fabiano Caruana
There are no openings in this app you have to add them yourself. Totally useless.
Disappointing
Hegemon54
I bought this app with the expectation I could jump in start learning and memorizing opening sequences. It's an essentially an empty database that YOU the user must fill in with ruy Lopez, Kings indian etc, meaning find the moves elsewhere and put into the app. Seems like the creator could have included basic openings easily but chose not to out of laziness.
Track your tourney lines
Orbusii
Entered 400 variations and counting: my pet Alekhine's, Sicilian, etc. Fun to solve!
Yoyo
Dr. Hotpocket
Great app! One idea is that the app should quiz you less on an opening the more you get it right, and if you are consistently getting an opening wrong it should quiz you more. Overall, Great app that helps me memorize my openings!
Great
d0su
I use this app all the time. I am not aware of any better tool for practicing custom openings offline. It can handle transpositions, which is great. It also seems fairly stable, and the PGN export feature works. Bravo to the creator of this app! My number one complaint is with the randomization process of the trainer. It has a tendency to get "stuck" repeating the same line five or six times in a row. As a matter of fact, it seems to heavily favor some lines over others, for reasons unknown. For example, one line I am studying in the QGA has 106 different variations. Some of those variations have been drilled 50+ times, while at least 20% of them have not been drilled at all. I really have no way to fix it without outright disabling the lines I've already trained... but then there is no way to easily search for the lines I disabled. Changing the background color would be nice as well, but is really not necessary. If the trainer issue were fixed then I would give the app 5 stars.
Awesome app
Wild-horse
I'm a club player rated about 1900. I use this app daily to create my opening repertoire. I store my favorite lines from various books and opening databases. It would be awesome if Stockfish was built into it. It allows PGN files to be emailed/imported/exported as well.
