Mate in 2 Chess Puzzles app good for
I was looking for a good chess problem app and came across this series. Very nice. In fact, easily the best one out there. Only wish, a combined mega app so I dont have to have 4 icons!
One of my favorite chess apps. Works flawlessly. Fast, nice and I would recommend this app to anyone who enjoys playing chess.
A excellent, functional app with a good variety of challenging problems.
I got this app, the WorldChamps, and the Mate in 3 Puzzles. They are all wonderful apps that I can recommend to any chess lover. In addition to that I should mention the excellent and prompt support that I got from the programmer of these apps when I had a little problem. Even though I was quite happy to get the app for such a low price, I think that it actually is worth more. I would have paid up to $4.99 without regretting it for one moment.
I bought all of these packs and theyre great. To the guy complaining that they arent mate in 2, they are not all FORCED mate in 2 but the unforced mate in 2s are from actual games which challenges you to look for human error in your games. Compare how many times you have given forced and unforced mates in your own games and you will understand why predicting a human opponents play is more important than what a computer might play. Really recommend all of the packs, its 5 bucks
Selection of puzzles is nice, however navigation between them is troublesome. You should always scroll down from very beginning of the list. Design is not iPhone style
Some bad moments
I bought the mate in 1 pack, and was quite impressed, so I bought mate in 2. Unfortunately, many of these puzzles are mate in more than 2. The app assumes black will make a specific move in response to whites first move.. And yes, if we permit that, then it will mate in 2. However, in many cases if black were to make another move (other than that programmed by the app), then the mate will take several more moves, or not at all.
I enjoying using mate in 2, I only wish that there was an option to play black against the white, because sometimes Im sure its not a true mate in 2 game, only an error on blacks move.
I am an intermediate chess player. Ive been rated near 1600, and won a few tournament games (and lost a few). I have several chess puzzle books including some popular books by Bruce Pandolfini, Fred Wilson/Bruce Alberston and Laszlo Polgar. Typically I can solve about two-thirds of the puzzles in these books. I had hoped for similar chess puzzles in this app, but unfortunately, I am dissappointed. Though the "Mate in 1" app is very easy, and the first twelve puzzles in this app are similarly easy, the difficulty suddenly jumps to a level that probably challenges even Grandmaster players to work through. Im of course guessing about that, but the point is, the difficulty level jumps very suddenly to an extremely high level. A puzzle I recently struggled with had close to 50 candidates for the 1st move, and nearly as many for the 2nd move, giving a total of almost 2500 possible solutions. When you play chess, you dont go through every possibility to find your move -- you consider the best "candidate moves," which are often forcing moves or moves which offer the best possibility of improving your position. But if you simply look at "candidates" in these puzzles, youll often be frustrated, as the solution frequently involves a move that is most definitely NOT a likely candidate move. After struggling a long time and failing to find a solution in any puzzles (beyond the "Warm-up" puzzles), I resorted to taking the "hint," and even then, it took a while to find the winning move.
If youre a Grandmaster, or an amateur hunting for an app to waste a lot of time on, this is the one. If, however, youd like to develop some useful tactical skill and improve your chess game, Id recommend you find another app.
As a beginner, I bought this game to practice. The scenarios are unrealistic. In a lot of these the solution requires a move that doesnt make sense, but just happens to invoke the right response from the AI.it kinda felt like i was looking for the one random move that caused the AI to malfunction. Dont buy this for practice
This app will mess up you chess, because many solution require a move that will make it a mate in two but is NOT forced. So really the puzzles are wrong because there are delay moves, as well as moves that would avoid the mate. So if you enter some of the puzzles into a chess engine and ask it to solve it, you will find too many puzzles are bad. But if you are looking to mess up your chess this is a great app for that. garbage. .whats worse is the apps still has the same issue since ipad one. and its july 2015 and non of their apps are fixed.
update 2016 and still not fixed
