iPhone App Review: Chess Pro

For this installement of the iPhone App Review we will be concentrating on a recent edition to the 99Games App Store line up.

99Games are one of the many app developers that have produced mobile Chess games for the iPhone and iPod Touch. In an attempt to cater for all, they've got two versions on offer: Chess Lite , a more basic version, plus the fully featured Chess Pro, aimed at both the more capable chess player, and those of us that like lots of fancy options. The two versions are currently available in the App Store with Chess Lite coming in at a credit crunch busting £0.59, were as Chess Pro is currently £2.39. Both are around 4.5 MB's and are rated 4+, meaning those who have kids can start their sons/daughters chess career at a young age.

Just what you had in mind?...read on!

A quick look at Chess Lite revealed a clean, fast and easy to use interface, with the abilty to play as White, Black or in a two player mode on a medium difficultly setting. Chess lite is not necessarily aimed at beginners or those who have never played before. So what has Chess Pro got to offer and is it worth the money?

As with the lite version Chess Pro gives the options to play in a two player mode that flips the screen 180 between turns. However with Chess Pro, there is now the option to play two extra variants of the regular chess game. Suicide changes the goal to one where you have to lose all your pieces! Crazy I know but its actually good fun, if a little confusing at first. In Suicide the king is treated as a regular piece, although castling is still an option. The second variant is loser which is similar to suicide except the king works like normal and therefore you can win via checkmate.


The chess board is a simple 2D layout with options to save, undo, hint and obviously a back option. Save is useful for those short tube journeys were you actually don't get delayed and run out of time to checkmate your iPhone. Undo allows you to step back as many turns as you want (unless you have been beaten).

Chess Pro also has two extra 3D theme options; Metalic and Wood. When using either 3D theme the method of moving your pieces across the board changes from a simple yet effective drag, to a tap to select and move the piece to its desired square. The 2D theme is therefore slightly easier to use and a little more pratical.
Also in the pro version is the option to show what moves are avaible everytime a piece is select. Listed in the menu as ‘Legal Moves’ this is helpful for those who are either less familiar with the rules or cannot count. Along the same lines as ‘Legal Moves’ is the option to display a new hint on every turn. It should be noted that this feature is also available in the lite version and again is helpful for the less advanced players and seems to be very intelligent.

The game engine is probably the best part of Chess Pro. Both versions use the very intelligent opensource GNU engine, which inturn uses the ‘Opening Book’ method of learning from the worlds best players. Chess Pro is different in that it allows the user to select from three difficulty levels; easy, medium and hard. Easy requires little effort and a game can easily be finished in a couple of minutes. Medium on the other had provides an intelligent opponent which requires a greater amount of skill and time. Hard is not for beginners, infact it will likely challenge even the most serious players. The GNU engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Chess) is said to achieve an ELO rating (chess rating system) of 2750, however on iPhone hardware this is likely to be far less. It would be very difficult to rate the actual score but given that only 4 players have ever exceed 2800, even with a score of 2000+ (guessetimate) on hard, few would complain about the lack of a decent challenge; especially as this is a £2.39 mobile chess game!

Overall Chess Pro is a wise choice for players of any ability looking for a iPhone/iPod Touch chess game. 99Games have done a great job with adding only the best and most useful features, whilst still keeping the interface clean and intuative.

Best feature? Has to be the way you can view the last move your opponent made, just incase you blinked and missed it!

Anything missing? Not really but some work on the quality and quantity of the themes in future updates would be nice.

Worth the dosh? If you like chess and have either an iPhone or iPod Touch then definantly yes.