Chess Tactics Pro (Puzzles)

I always return to this app for tactics. Probably the best engine in the store for analyzing your games. 5 stars because even with what I explain below, it is better than all the others. If I could give one improvement, it would be to report tactic bugs. I have ran into 2 out of hundreds so this is a small thing) where there was an equal move, or only worked because the wrong move was played during the sequence by the app. For instance, #50 of the easy set. The queen moving to f5 after you play the bishop capture allows you to mate with rook. A much stronger move for black would be bishop to f5, black loses the queen, but after bishop takes rook black is only down 3 points. Running the engine allows another 40 moves before a forced mate by white. Anyway, good job devs. Overall 5/5

I have not encountered a better app-based tactical tool. Easy to use in spare moments (when one does not have enough time for a match). And one can spend a fair amount of time using this app and feel consistently challenged. Its navigation is perhaps not quite as fluid as it would be after some improvement. And I join others in hoping that bugs are fixed relating to scenarios when one can mate in a single move as opposed to the prescribed six, as just one of several examples. I do not write many reviews, but I do so in this instance to echo that a very, very good app could be made even better.

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.

I really enjoy the puzzles. I’ve played chess thousands of times, and even had a PC chess training program around twenty years ago, but I’ve never been very good. I’m on puzzle #36 in the intermediate level, and I was just thinking today that I noticed this method has actually improved my game. The two-four move challenges are not daunting enough to discourage, and I find it hard to not say, “Just one more, just one more...” Each “baby-step puzzle is like a bite-sized candy. Pretty soon you’ve eaten the whole bag! I’m gonna finish them all !!

I’ve played a bunch of the puzzles now, and there have been a bunch of times where it says I made a move incorrectly, when in reality it was wrong. There was a time where I could have checkmated the king by sacrificing my bishop, and it said it was wrong. The correct move wasn’t even checkmate. I continued to go through the problems even after I “solved” them, and found that the king could avoid checkmate 3-5 moves later. It was pretty annoying. But the difficulty was good. Although some puzzles are rated as “easy” they are definitely not beginner, and improved my game quite a bit.