HIARCS Chess for iPad Reviews

Can I give more stars?

MediocreFred

Fantastic program for learning, studying, and playing. I don't believe you can get as good of a program for the money anywhere. The element that sets this chess program apart is the adjustable playing strengths and styles. It absolutely creates a new dimension to the game. Best on the market.

Tough, tight Program!!

Geo1783

At one time, I was able to beat this game by reducing its level of competency to my own or slightly higher. After two years, I steadily increased my rating through learning from a competent opponent. The program does make errors; but, it's overall effectiveness must be no less than 97-98%. Humans make far more errors in play, yet innovation does exceed computation in some cases. Notably, the program's upgrades have continued to increase its depth and knowledge of historical games. I highly recommend iPad users to give this chess app a try. Best program I ever want to play. I love the way it adapts to any situation, regardless of previous play.

Good game; weak UX

Robert Ryan

The UI of this app is not very elegant: 1. Inconsistent font usage. Most of the app is using a sans-serif font, but the names of the players in a serif font, and the opening book is in a courier fixed width font. 2. The board should be bigger. When playing a game, the priority is an immersive playing experience and the board should be as big as possible. But there is unnecessary wasted space here. It strikes me that when playing a game, the screen should be optimized for (a) board; (b) clocks; and (c) move list. Sure, resize these smaller if you turn on/off other features, but you should be able to make the game itself the dominant feature. Move the game controls aside. Let us remove the ELO rating views entirely. Minimize the chrome and focus on the game experience. 3. When you hide the opening book list, the game moves list should take up the whole screen, but it doesn't, and the little slider that lets you zip through the game quickly is sitting there, floating in the middle of the screen. Frankly, I'd suggest losing that slider altogether and let us click on the moves themselves. 4. The pop-up menus in the bottom are strange UX. First, that bottom row is a strange place to be showing menus at all. Second, if you click on one menu to show its popover and then try to click on another, the clicks on this bottom bar aren't recognized. This is especially poor UX because you frequently are searching for some menu option, not knowing which menu some feature is on, you'll click on one menu, not see it there, go to click on the next menu, and your tap isn't recognized. You have to tap somewhere to dismiss first popover menu before you can open another popover menu. Also, the presence of titles at the top of the popover menus is a very poor UI choice. 5. Elements are not always updated correctly. For example, I have my engine set at a particular ELO, but it says "2060" for the ELO on the screen. Likewise I had turned off "show captured material" feature, but when I started the app, it showed up again, only disappearing when I started a new game. There are tons of other issues in this UI, too. But let me say that, bottom line, I respect the game engine, but this app desperately needs a UI overhaul. In terms of core functionality, I was hoping that this would capture variations like the desktop app can. E.g. if I go back a few moves and try a different move, I'd like the option of keeping the old line as a variation.

I Came Back To HIARCs

AvianoSaint

With the recent upgrade (Fall 2017) I returned to using Hiarcs in place of Smallfish despite Smallfish using Stockfish 8. First reason, a million opening positions and shown in a listing as you play. In contrast Smallfish has a small book and displays few choices. So to learn openings or start from a strong game position, Hiarcs is far better. Second reason, Hiarcs has a game replay feature with time select ability. Third reason, AutoPlay feature from any point in the game and by adjusting the time settings can control strength of play. After the completion, the the game can be saved or sent to the Analyze This app for deep analysis. Fourth reason, if you really, really need Smallfish with its added six Specialized End Tables (at a cost) that you purchased to analyze simply email the game. Smallfish has some advantages - stronger (Stockfish) engine, can offer three suggested moves and a game graph, and developer Ted Wong responds to inquires quickly. But Hiarcs’ upgrade pushed Smallfish aside for playing a game. For pure analysis I use Asim Pereira’s Analyze This app which uses Stockfish 8 and offers numerous, wonderful, and helpful features!

Excellent engine but poor GUI

_NM_

The engine is excellent and is a good sparring partner. However, the GUI implementation looks like something designed using MS FrontPage around the turn of the century.

Missing one functionality

Notsuchnickiguess

This app is very close to satisfy my needs except for one missing functionality. There are a million chess apps in App Store now but none of them is willing to be a pure and real chessboard. That is, I need a PUZZLE SOLVING MODE with NO moves and arrows shown. No hint and AI engine coaching available. This will force the learner to solve the puzzles. This is what I need.

HIARCS Chess for iPad Reviews – Page 6