Magnus Trainer - Train Chess

I’ve tried learning chess on many platforms but this one is my favorite! Despite of having premium features, free ones help you to learn how to play on many creative ways. That’s the thing I’ve never seen before, the alternative methods for making you improve abilities on the board (sometimes even not playing strictly chess!!). Furthermore, since I downloaded Magnus Trainer I’ve incredibly improved at recognizing patterns of mates and tactics, playing strategically and learning one or two openings with all it’s combinations; and despite some exercises could seem unpractical I could see my results against lot of people. Finally, I affirm that this the most didactic way of learning this beautiful game and it’s designed for beginners and advanced players. So after what you have read, you know a quarter of what the app is and you have my word that you’re gonna like it.

I play this app a lot and love trying to 3-Star the different games. One thing though, and I have seen other reviews like this before is that some of the Croc Tamer Levels are physically impossible to 3-star. You have to fully wait for the croc to land on its square even if it’s a knight moving all the way across the board for example, and if the 4th or 5th croc is the one that makes a wrong move, too much time is eaten up waiting for animations. Even tapping as fast as possible does not achieve a 3-Star. Test Croc Tamer Level 9 in Session 32 with the only intention of 3-starring it to see what I mean. Perhaps there is a part of that gameplay that I am missing? I have 3-starred Croc Tamer 1-8, and have 2-starred every other available Croc Tamer above that. It’s also somewhat confusing just what criteria unlocks levels as a free to play player. I have 3-starred every level my Dad has even attempted, yet he has “Hanging Pawns” lesson unlocked, and I cannot figure out how to unlock it. Do different accounts have random extra lessons unlocked?

Its obvious a huge amount of effort went into this app, but I think there some things Id still like to see different. One example is it would be awesome if there was a “sandbox” mode. One where you could control all pieces on the board/ability to move all pieces into a desired position before initiating play. Do for example you start “sandbox mode”, you set up the board however you like then once you’re done you can allow AI to come in and start playing from a pre-made board. Another thing Id LOVE to see is more functionality within the mini games, the mini games are already above and beyond my expectations for this app but the fact that you are only allowed to play them with semi-random pieces is kind of a disappointment. A way to fix this would be allowing players to choose which piece they play mini games with e.g. if I want to play a game with the knight only, I should be allowed to do so.

ask user to change the rating

The timing aspect is the elephant in the room. I understand it’s good to get facile enough to be able to do quick calculations... but pegging notation perfectly under time stress? Identifying illegal moves when 4 pieces are moving on the board? Capturing occasionally vanishing keys with multiple pieces moving on the board? I’m going to keep playing, but I fail to understand how these things are actually helping my chess playing, even in a timed setting. The best stuff is clearly the motifs, mate puzzles, lessons, and quick identifying of these. The rest feels like pointless, dexterity challenge to wear the player down to paying for the app, which I would have gladly done at the onset if I could skip all this nonsense with arbitrarily timed challenges that seem to have dubious positive value on OTB gameplay. tl;dr Two dots app model. Can’t blame people for making money, but wish 1/2 the energy went into making an app that focused purely on chess training.

First off great app. It’s like lichess if lichess had instructional videos behind a paywall(and I’m not even gonna mention chesscom)..so it’s actually good and we understand that money has to be made you know. Just one burning problem with the tactics games like the rajahs riddles. If we get the tactical idea wrong we CAN NOT see the solution???? I really don’t understand this functionality and it’s pretty annoying especially at the higher lessons like lessons 90+ where the problems require some calculation..I mean you spend some minutes on a tactical problem double check if you calculated correctly but you just missed some detail, click the wrong tactical idea and BOOM wrong next question...of course if you get the idea right but still miss something you can see the correct answer-you should still be able to see the solution if you get the idea wrong.