Too tough for me

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.

PianoPlaya about Mate in 2 Chess Puzzles, v2.3