SmallChess Pro Reviews

Good app

b-pops

I like that this app allows you to customize the look and feel of the board/pieces. After last week’s update, seems like there may be a bug in the online play function. I can no longer join online games on FICS, even though I can sign in. Would also be nice to add chat functionality. Overall a very good app and hope the online issue is fixed soon.

A great chess app

The Real Fab One

There are several great chess apps for the iPhone and iPads. This is one of them. While the other great ones might be stronger (and some are, such as Stockfish), SmallFish has one feature that is superior to all the others: the set-up feature. On all the other great chess apps, trying to set up a position is frustratingly futile. (After carefully setting up a few pieces, they disappear from the squares, or the set-up mechanism quits before the set-up is completed.) In short, I like this app a lot. If future updates make it stronger, all the better.

Wow, what a disappointment

JulyStern

I’m so disappointed. It advertises chess puzzles, but 2/3 of the app is just a bunch of dumb trivia games. There is a small section of tactics puzzles, but if I do any analysis on a puzzle, the “play this position” button stops working (does nothing), and I can’t move on to the next puzzle but instead have to quit and restart the game. I have wasted my money.

No under promotion

Eric Guttenberg

In an otherwise excellent program, I found one curious failure. It absolutely refuses to underpromote a pawn. It recognizes and accepts an underpromotion by its opponent and it shows an underpromotion in its own analysis if that is its best line of play. But when it makes its actual move, it will only promote to a queen....even if promoting to queen leads to an immediate loss and promoting to knight leads to an immediate win, it will still promote to a queen. Its analysis will show the win with the knight but the actual move it makes will be the queen.

What a gem!

_NM_

This is an amazing chess app! Don’t be fooled by its simple appearance (which actually looks very clean and functional). It can paste PGN’s from the clipboard (you need to find them under the game menu, load game, my imports ...). Its analysis functions are unmatched. The analysis line brings up a small chessboard and you can visualize the line. It supports variations. It even has a variation board. It is quite a complex package for the iPad. If you like chess and want to play on the iPad, I highly recommend the pro version of this app. It even has a decent FICS client!

Really entertaining

Rajpsych12345

The engine derived from Stockfish, which is the worlds strongest engine. The interface is clean and the options are well organized. Easy to take back a move (and you’ll need to). The levels seem to actually handicap the engine appropriately. That’s not easy to do, and it greatly contributes to the fun. In short, totally worth the money. The board and pieces look great. Best money I ever spent on a chess program

Good, but “Beauty of Chess?”

SFKeepay

Okay, so this is a strong (but imperfect - the coaching function is too overbearing when on, for instance) chess app. But under “Training”, it has a section called “Beauty of Chess” which is explained as “...a quiz in which you attempt to answer questions related to woman chess players.” Really? In 2019? Are there no beautiful male chess players? Does objectifying ANYBODY have any place in this app or this game? Loose this dinosaur-minded sexist crap and lets play chess.

Overall good

Dan 8889

Standard chess works well but Fischer-Random needs some work.... Unable to castle playing Fischer-Random

For when you’re offline

atombofoya

Good little app when you’re offline. Love the analytics, beautiful selection of boards and pieces, but i keep getting the same Philidor defense when I open E4. Wrote to the developer and the answer was to get new books. I tried this and still got the same results. Hope this gets fixed.

Slow response

Michael$928777

Nice to be able to play as guest without being rated but the response when making a move is so slow it's unusable for blitz

SmallChess Pro Reviews – Page 5