Last updated on January 22nd, 2026 at 06:50 pm
Chess – Free – Strategy Game Review
Chess – Free is a Strategy/Board game from 况 郭, first launched in 14th July 2012.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 74+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Chess – Free Stand Out
A well designed chess app with a lot of powerful features.
Features:
- Play as white or black, against the computer or a friend.
- 10 difficulty levels, from novice to grandmaster.
- Support online gameplay.
- Support LAN game via bluetooth/Wi-Fi.
- Include more than 38000 chess puzzles, divided into 13 collections.
- Computer hint and unlimited undo for beginners.
- Changeable chessboards and piece sets, 2D/3D piece styles.
- Load and save games to PGN files.
- Autosaving your current game.
- Setup position, intelligent validity check.
- Randomly go to any point in the current game.
- Provide thousands of classic chess games to download, such as grandmaster games, world championship games.
- More functions: handicap, view move list, automatic move playback, etc.
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Chess – Free is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 13th January 2016
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
Support online gameplay.
Download & Availability
Chess – Free is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Please update app very good app but need to online game.
Good for playing online. Cant beat computer all the time. Buttons are in Chinese for some reason, the rest is in English. Fixes: Nice if you could chat players you want to play with before actually starting game. Would also be nice if you could save being as guest, for the bought version. We seem to win more games against online players as guest because im more relaxed.
So Im a pretty serious chess player, and Im really really into computer chess/engine chess… When we get bored Ill download a bunch of random chess apps and play them against each other at their highest difficulty, in little engine/chess bot tourneys.. We always play the winner against Stockfish (11, not 12 which we know is the newest and best, but v.11 is still a world renowned chess software amongst players and the computer chess world, elite engine nonetheless, certainly a 3000+ Elo we would assume…) This app one its little tourney and in the 3 games vs Stockfish that it played (1 white, 1 black, then one random) it one its first game with the white pieces in an AMAZING! Passed pawn pushing end game. It drew the 2nd game with black, and it drew the 3rd game with white… Incredible. Ive seen some of these apps perform very well vs Stockfish and even force some draws here and there with the white pieces, but Ive NEVER!!! Seen an app beat that engine, and Ive NEVER!!! Seen results other than a loss with the black pieces… Amazing stuff.
Thank you so much to who ever came up with this app!!! Im not very good at chess only won one game of chess in our life But this game helps us learn better strategys and moves! Its fun to play because like we said we wasnt very good at the beginning,So… We got to pick from what difficulty we wanted!!! And theres like 10 different difficulty levels you can pick from… Very pleased, It deserves 5 Stars.
This is the most user friendly game ever! Has 3000 puzzles starting from easy to hard, theyre very user-friendly you can back up and you can try as many times as you like to do it until you get it. You may solve these puzzles anyway you like, but it will always solve the puzzle the quickest way. You can go to lan settings and play online or against your friends. Just click on lan settings and it will prompt. Im sure your friends would have to have the chess app as well and go into lan settings. You are like part of the club at that point. You can have a username, totally free of charge. You can set up the board very easily, anywhere you like. It will play positions you set up, against you or its self. It also keeps up with the moves in the game, just have to save the game first, go back to saved games and load it move by move. You can go to each move as you like or Any moves in the game.
The developers claim it would be ranked about 3rd in the world, its AI algorithm is that good we have yet to beat Chess Free.
Best ever game cnvcs .. Thanks for all for your update.
Out of the blue the computer moved a pawn forward one square on the diagonal, it was just a move not a capture, we hit the reply and the piece continued to make the move repeatedly, not repeated in subsequent games, FYI.
Cant figure out how to castle.
Its an okay chess app. But no analysis offered. And we wish it would give an estimate of elo ratings for the difficulty settings. We would estimate the Novice difficulty ranking to be close to 1600-1700 elo. Which is not novice we also wish we had an idea how many moves ahead the engine is thinking. Im afraid the confusion with novice, not truly being a novice play type will turn off new chess enthusiasts. We will give credit where credits is due: this is one of the most difficult chess engines we have played.
Once we load a saved game we cant analyze it well because theres only an UNDO button and not a REDO button.
"Failed to connect" message every time we try to play now. It used to work great. What happened? Our iOS is up to date all the time. We gave up and installed Chess Online +.
Used to work and was clean platform to play a game but too many bugs and too many disconnects anw dose not even get connected. Dont waste your time.
Several times now the computer has made an illegal capture with the same glitch. The computer sometimes takes your pawn by moving its own pawn diagonally to an unoccupied square behind your pawn. The only way to avoid this in your game is to move a different piece. Another review said that this happened to him only once, but this has happened to us multiple times in 25 games.
The computer is so good. We mean, like, crazy good. We cant win. They need a baby level for those like us who are good but not mastery level. Good luck to everyone who wants to lose their self esteem when it comes to chess.
Since watching Queens Gambit, our chess bug once lost has been found. However on this app, when set to the expert level, if it senses it might get beat, it cheats with illegal moves. Im sure the developer grew tired but if the app doesnt play straight up chess, its a waste of time. Really disappointed because we forgot this app did this and why we deleted a long time ago. Let us know when you fix the bugs.
Computer in beginner mode is even ridiculous. It will often repeat moves until you are forced to draw, or until you HAVE to make 2 moves in a row essentially breaking your defense.
You mean to tell us that you couldnt program this game so that iPad users can use it in Landscape mode. Our case doesnt let us rest it in portrait mode. What a joke.
The description says you can add family members and that it works for online play. We dont see anywhere to add family members nor a way to play specific players. We got this to play with a family member online. It doesnt appear to do that.
Was looking for a chess app to play with Bluetooth. The Bluetooth on this app simply doesn't work. We tried on 3 different devices and none of them would work with the Bluetooth. It would see the other device but when you selected the device to join it would say "connect failed" every time on all devices.
We tried to play it several times but in a while it disconnects and blame both players that had disconnect.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.3.0
- Size: 8.32 MB
- iOS: 5.1.1 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [况 郭]()
Last updated: 13th January 2016 | Genre: Strategy, Board | Developer: 况 郭