SmallFish Chess Reviews

No matter what I do in the options, I always win because my opponent runs out of time. The game continues, however, even though the clock is 0.00 so that’s a good thing. This issue starts immediately: playing white pieces, I play 1. d4, black always immediately plays either d5 or f6; I play 2. c4 . . . . black “thinks” 20-40 seconds before making a second move, usually c5. Really? As long as 40 seconds to make the second move. And that “thinking” exists throughout the game. For instance, black offers a queen trade: I accept. Then black deliberates 20, 30, etc. seconds whether or not to capture my queen when there is obvious nothing to deliberate. Hardly a realistic or enjoyable scenario.

I don’t know what the advantages of SmallFishChess are over stock fish. it says in the description review your game with comments. That’s leading me to believe that it annotate’s my game…. it does not. Yes you can analyze your game with comments if you leave those comments. So it lets you write your own comments in a game. Next I load one of the grandmaster games. The game shows annotations but soon as you make the move the annotations disappear. If I’m doing something wrong, please explain it to me and I will change my review. Which brings up another point. SmallFishChess is not user-friendly at all.

After updating to ios13.6, it seems that there are graphic issues (piece alignment to the board, coordinates alignment to the board). None of these are impediments to using it, but are annoying.
Please update!
*Having tried many chess apps, I consider SmallFishChess to be excellent! Most chess enthusiasts say that the only decent chess games were developed for PC. Until finding SmallFishChess I thought that was true. My preferred choice has been Chess Master- Grandmaster edition (pc version), which I used for more than 10 years. SmallFishChess is certainly the best contender yet!

I find SmallFish difficult to navigate(the HIARCS app is very intuitive but not free of charge). Also I believe SmallFish does not display number of positions looked at per second as the regular Stockfish app does. Stockfish is free and easy to use. Another issue is that I can’t see whether the endgame tablebase I downloaded is installed on SmallFish, or how to verify that SmallFish is using them( I think a red TB is displayed WHILE the table base is in use). But If true that it’s Elo ~3300 on iphones, that’s pretty cool. If u mostly need the very strongest app, at the cost of some features smallfish is the one to get.

Running on an iPhone 11 using iOS 14.4 and it crashes almost every time I use it. Crashes when I manually set up a board to play out or when I'm adjusting settings.

I love SmallFishChess and would love it to work seamlessly. The crashing is unfortunate so I can do anything to reduce the crashing, let me know.

Love the board setup option, option to play as black or white, the two or three move recommendations. I would love if it told you the opening you were playing as you chose the moves.

I’m not sure what I did with it, but I was messing with the setup positions game-set to have a little fire in the game, but it crashed, completely fine. Then I realized it crashes every time I opened it, now I’m upset that I broke SmallFishChess . If your wondering, I got it to work but I had to uninstall, so glad the fix was that easy, I just wish there was a warning on invalid setups.

This chess game provides a list of customization features, which I love. One problem, sometimes, it won’t let me move my pieces. Right when the opposing opponent is done, I try to move a piece, but it wouldn’t let me. I could only move my king, making me watch all of my other pieces soon disappear and leave my king all alone. One time, it froze completely and left me just staring at my screen for a good twenty seconds. At least it provides opportunities for settings for newer players, such as showing legal moves and difficulty modes.

This thing is simply amazing! A must-have for any serious or aspiring Chess player. It used to be, in my experience, that a phone app couldn't match up to a program on a computer. I have SmallFishChess on my lap(tablet)top and on my phone and it performs just the same. Extremely strong! You can see several lines simultaneously. Truest a great study/strengthening tool. The fact that it's free, well, it's just outstanding...!

What a great app, and free. I have tried just about every chess app on here, and keep coming back to this one. It is well-designed, with no hassle or irritating social media or distractions. I really appreciate how it will identify the opening being used, which is one of the big ways I enjoy using SmallFishChess. Amazing job.

I’m not an expert by any means, but Stockfish is such a great chess engine. Ted has done a great job of bringing Stockfish to iOS in SmallFish! Kudos for the hard work and keeping SmallFishChess free of charge and ad free! My favorite feature is the “blunder check” which shows where made I made poor choices, and provides better moves.

This is almost perfect! As a uscf master SmallFishChess works as a tool to help me improve my chess abilities and helps me prevent mistakes ive done in past games but theres one thing that itches me about it SmallFishChess doesnt have a feature that lets the robot play like someone from different elos but overall a 4/5 star app keep uo the good work!

This is definitely the best Stockfish app out there. Highly recommend.

The only problem I’ve noticed is that the best move arrow often does not match with the actual best move as provided by the analysis. Also, sometimes the three lines of analysis are not ordered by their actual strength. Other than that, amazing app with very active development.

The SmallFish Application is incredibly powerful and offers an exceptionally useful array of features, including a continuously updated graph showing how well the player is doing. The blue arrows point out all possible legal moves. Incredibly, the application is free of charge. Highly recommended for players of all levels, and can challenge players at the highest levels.

This game, on intermediate level is very challenging for me. It offers a number of different game pièce icons and provides a list of the moves made. I know there are a number of free chess games offered in SmallFishChess Store but I’m sticking with this I e as it has th be one of the best. It even has a function where you can leave notes as you play along for further study. Great game and what’s more it’s free!

SmallFishChess is Fast, smooth and user friendly for ALL levels, and the best chess interface I’ve seen on a chess app with no glitches and freeze. A NYU student told me to try it out and I am so happy I did! Because I had tried 3 well known ones and deleted them within a few days because they were monumentally awful!

SmallFishChess works great for analyzing games and checking out the engine moves. I think it will be better tho if it has chess board scanning feature like other chess apps. Other apps have a feature which lets you take a screenshot of chess board and set up the board with the picture. It would be great if SmallFishChess also adds this!

Gets to the heart of chess in a straightforward and direct way helping the player improve with thoughtful tips and take backs. Has many options to change the board, pieces, time duration and level of play. A true asset for improving your chess game!
SmallFish is the Best chess app and nothing compares to it.

Plays at various rating intervals, makes suggestions, saves games, etc, all with the strongest chess engine available. Thanks to the generosity of the designer, SmallFish is free!

I play SmallFishChess using my desired openings and very quickly my vision of the board has improved as well as my positional understanding and better move choices.

SmallFish is the best chess tutor you will ever have!!

Thank you so much.

Could you please add personality, adjustable search depth, and more evaluation lines (10)! SmallFishChess is literally the best out there but these are all features I have desperately wanted in one app but haven’t been able to find in an all in one package. Thank you for all your hard work! SmallFishChess already is the best, but these features would blow the competition out of the water.

I love that the grapg function will show me every time I make a bad move and then, with the scroll bar, I can take that bad move back and try something else (hopefully, with a better rating on the graph). With these two tools working in tandem and providing feedback, I can teach myself how to read the board and use intelligent strategy.

This has been useful for reviewing my games against opponents by learning what I should do in games and why they are useful, it can show opponents their true intentions in their moves and overall it is very useful for beginners trying to improve their stats. Just don’t cheat.