Contact Chess Tactics Pro Puzzles Support

by Pawn Trader

I have kept this app on my iPhone for a few years now, coming back to it from time to time. This is a very solid app. First of all, it does not require an internet connection, like many of the other apps do. Most of the problems are correct, i.e. I do not run into bugs too often. I removed one star for the embedded chess engine - not sure what it is, since the name is never mentioned anywhere, but I get the feeling the engine it truly archaic (self made?). Not sure why in all these years the author chose not to upgrade to something like the most recent Stockfish version. And another star was lost due to the combination of minor cosmetic issues:
* some minor errors, i.e. the program does not always respond with the best possible move
* the board color schemes choice could be a bit better
* the board sound is quite strange, more like a click, not very realistic

by Tupelobound

Of all the chess tactics apps this one is very straight forward and a pleasure to use. (Some of the others out there can get very convoluted with their features.) My only gripe with some of these puzzles is that not all of them contain the most important feature in Chess combinations and that is: The Forced Move. The reason I’m writing this review, was because I just did one of their daily puzzles (nice feature) and after white takes black’s Bishop, the answer for black was to take the bishop with a pawn? Thus exposing the lonely Rook on the back file to be taken with white’s Rook... resulting in mate. Well… any decent player knows that you shouldn’t take that bishop. I find puzzles like this sometimes, but not all the time. Perhaps they need a better chess editor on board? Overall, not a bad app. Definitely worth having.

by 2$$/Gnyce2$$/

I liked the game at first and it felt fresh, but after finishing the built in puzzles all I was left with was the daily puzzles. But even with those, I wish the devs would include only “checkmate in x” puzzles, where the end result is a checkmate. I’ve only been doing the hard puzzles, and the game would tell me that a puzzle is “solved” but the actual game still had several moves before even reaching the endgame. This leaves me unfulfilled, and doesn’t help improve endgame or checkmate skills.