Last updated on November 29th, 2025 at 10:42 am
CT-ART 4.0 (Chess Tactics) – Puzzle Game Review
CT-ART 4.0 (Chess Tactics) is a Puzzle/Education/Board game from CHESSQUEEN INC, first launched in 3rd September 2016.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 2,106+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes CT-ART 4.0 (Chess Tactics) Stand Out
The legendary tactics course that has been voted more than once by chess experts as the best chess training program in the world. This version includes 2,200 basic exercises and 1,800 auxiliary exercises, divided into 50 topics.
The course is based on the bestselling book Combination Motifs by a renowned trainer grandmaster Maxim Blokh. All positions have been hand-picked over the course of 20 years of training practice and come in the order that ensures most efficient learning. Each position comes with a special hint unique to this course – a 5×5 mini-position designed to convey the very essence of the tactical maneuver used in the main example.
This course is in the series Chess King Learn, which is an unprecedented chess teaching method. In the series are included courses in tactics, strategy, openings, middle game, and endgame, split by levels from beginners to experienced players, and even professional players.
With the help of this course, you can improve your chess knowledge, learn new tactical tricks and combinations, and consolidate the acquired knowledge into practice.
The program acts as a coach who gives tasks to solve and helps to solve them if you get stuck. It will give you hints, explanations and show you even striking refutation of the mistakes you might make.
Advantages of the program:
• High quality examples, all double-checked for correctness
• You need to enter all key moves, required by the teacher
• Different levels of complexity of the tasks
• Various goals, which need to be reached in the problems
• The program gives hint if an error is made
• For typical mistaken moves, the refutation is shown
• You can play out any position of the tasks against the computer
• Interactive theoretical lessons
• Structured table of contents
• The program monitors the change in the rating (ELO) of the player during the learning process
• Test mode with flexible settings
• Possibility to bookmark favorite exercises
• The application is adapted to the bigger screen of a tablet
• The application does not require an internet connection
The course includes a free part, in which you can test the program. Lessons offered in the free version is fully functional. They allow you to test the application in real world conditions before releasing the following topics:
- Themes
1.1. Annihilation of defense
1.2. Distraction
1.3. Decoy
1.4. Discovered attack
1.5. Opening of a file
1.6. Clearance
1.7. X-ray attack
1.8. Interception
1.9. Blocking, encirclement
1.10. Destruction of the pawn shelter
1.11. Pawn promotion
1.12. Intermediate move. winning of a tempo
1.13. Play for a stalemate
1.14. Restricting of material
1.15. Pursuit
1.16. Conjunction of tactical methods
1.17. Chess Tactics Art for Advanced - Difficulty
2.1. Level 10
2.2. Level 20
2.3. Level 30
2.4. Level 40
2.5. Level 50
2.6. Level 60
2.7. Level 70
2.8. Level 80
2.9. Level 90
2.10. Level 100
2.11. Level 110
2.12. Level 120
2.13. Level 130
2.14. Level 140
2.15. Level 150
2.16. Level 160
2.17. Level 170
2.18. Level 180
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, CT-ART 4.0 (Chess Tactics) is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 18th January 2018
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
• App is updated for iPhone X
• New home screen
• Disabled automatic playback of refutations
• Option to reset password
• Renaming of account
• Various fixes and improvements
Download & Availability
CT-ART 4.0 (Chess Tactics) is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get CT-ART 4.0 (Chess Tactics) on App Store
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:
Amazing app for chess.It really helped our chess rating.
The BEST chess training app for the iPhone and computer! Awesome training and practice app! Great value for the money! Based on well known and highly regarded book, Combinative Motiffs by Blokh Maksim Vladimirovich! Highly recommend.
Its unbelievable that this is a free app.
Makes you solve side lines and forces you to prove you understand the tactics. Very high level stuff and starts out small so you can see the patterns build. Also has a computer so you can understand how the rest of the game would play out, and prompts with hints when you get a puzzle wrong so that you can start to see the solution but still solve it yourself. Really good tactics app, probably the best Ive ever used.
Ive been playing chess puzzles for ever 10 years. This app by far has the best puzzles, each puzzle is instructive and will reiterate further into the concept its trying to reinforce.
Superb trainer. Many, many exercises to practice. Very well designed.
Excelente de 1800 a 200 en 2 meses de uso.
This app is exactly what we needed: something to wean us off of mindless tactical trainers like chess tempo which, although challenging, dont target specific motifs. The human mind needs patterns to remember things, and this app is great at doing that. Also, the hint after two mistakes which highlights various relevant pieces has an added bonus of forcing you to figure out the important arrangement of pieces, similar to some books which repeat a tactic with the same pieces but adding others to complicate things. Hoping to use the woodpecker method with this set of puzzles. Cheers.
One of the most perceptive and thoughtful training apps we've ever used.
This is a cheap way to get significant help with your chess.
Starts off with simple puzzles and progressively gets more challenging. Lets you solve from both sides of the board. We wish we got it sooner, back when we were competing haha.
One of the most comprehensive and exhaustive tactics trainer you can find in the chess world. Clear, concise, concrete – nothing useless.
Thoroughly enjoyable! Best tactics app available and Ive tried a few. $7.99 for the package which is cheaper than any tactic book Ive ever purchased.
Not sure of all the features yet, but so far Im enjoying able to play problems with both sides playing first, seeing arrows showing lines of force as hints, and when we get stuck being asked to solve similar problem on a 4×4 board.
If you have passed the beginner stage of learning chess, Id highly recommend this app. It really helps you learn and recognize important patterns in games and improves your skills in general. Also a great time killer when your bored.
Based on Maxim Blokcgs books from Russia.
This is so good for Young chess players. Thanks Delvopers.
Ejercicios escogidos para lograr fines especficos estratgicos.
Definitely get this if you want to improve your tactics.
Best chess solutions and learning the possibilities. Positional win vs first move advantage. Thorough and complete, no errors in games. Other versions available for beginners to experts, definitely worth purchasing additional puzzles. Plenty puzzles to start with.
Ct-Art is the gold standard in chess tactics software.
The best puzzle app. Much better than chess.com puzzles.
Just simply awesome. We are veteran and we were on pain med that had affected our memory and other things. This app has helped us exercise our brain increasing our problem solving, memory, logic, and visualization skills, not to include also help with our artistic abilities. We just have to say thank to the developers and all involved in this. We know its intended purpose is to help train chess players. But its helped on so many levels in life. Thank you again.
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Totally worth the purchase! We highly recommend this.
This is our gazillion app for learning chess, best one so far, love use it every day… Learn something every day, it gives you or take points from you… So you know where you are. Our chess has improved a lot.
Good app offering alternate variations and counterplay options. Somewhat leaning towards sacrifice solutions but that's ok.
Really opens your eyes to the possibilities.
We always liked CT ART and used previous versions on our Windows machine. Now that they have it on iOS its simply fantastic.
Best tactics app out there! We couldn't stop playing it. We bought the book years ago and now they have made the same Classic in an amazing program. The tactics are broken down into themes and progressively get harder. Very easy to use and great examples just like the book. We even went for the $7 for the full access to the advanced problems. Recommend.
Great app with themed problems grouped together.
Great training! We have it on our IPhone and its always available for those slow times we all get. The training is well thought out and presented.
Great app for all chess players brought us from 900 to 1500 we still use it Ive also tried its other apps the options are great we think you should definitely check it out.
It is very hard and fun. We love this game and there are no ads thank you game creators.
Several different series of themed puzzles burns it into your brain. Smaller 5×5 boards pop-up with the idea broken down when you struggle. However, you should only purchase the app if you like winning.
Best training app. Syncing across decices could be a little smoother.
Each tactic is highly instructive. Shows refutations for wrong moves. Will even bring up related exercises that have been distilled from the main tactic if you get really stuck. Fantastic app.
We just got this recently. We like it a lot. It shows us our mistakes and helps us to learn what is the correct moves. We look forward to learning from this for a long while.
WTH are those arrows?!!! This is challenging and someone tell us where the directions are! Plus, we already paid, but its like everything is AL A Carte! There are tons of Chess King (sub) apps that you can apparently purchase. Our hands are in the air! We give up.
We love the app, definitely argue that this is the best tactics app and training ever! However, we have on gripe and that we wished there was dark theme setting. We hate that the white back ground slowly burns our eyeballs from their sockets.
The puzzle quality is very high as they are all vetted with humans. The alternative lines and sub-puzzles when you cant find a tactic are a brilliant feature. The app is a little dated in design and sometimes moving chess pieces is interpreted as swiping which can be very annoying.
We love the tactics, and although it took getting used to, we now enjoy the counter play and alternative variation features. Especially the alternative variation, which forces you to consider contingencies more deeply. The only issue we have is that the rating system seems too forgiving. Sometimes we have to try two or three times and we still get a noticeable rating boost – it actually seems too difficult to lose rating points.
They recently disabled the automatic playback of refutations to bad moves. We dont like this. Being able to see these is useful, otherwise its hard to see just why a move is wrong. Theres no obvious way to enable auto-playback again. There is a way, which is to enable auto-hints, but this isnt obvious at all andfor us, worse yetmakes the problems too easy. It forces you to get hints when youre struggling with a problem, even to the point of having moves made for you by the app. We want to see refutations because seeing them helps us learn what Im doing wrong, but we dont want hints because they make problems too easy. Id rather struggle for several minutes and figure it out ourselves. We hope they fix this soon-ish. All it would take is adding a little toggle button to the settings menu.
We have enjoyed CT-Art on our PC in previous years and was more than willing to pay the $8 for each course. However, after installing and paying $8 ea for CT-Art 4.0 and Mating, both apps are locked pass the first levels. Please explain so we can update our rating.
We purchased the full version of this app in 2018. We deleted it from our phone because we took a break from chess. We just redownloaded the app and it's asking us to purchase the full version again. There is no way to contact the developer for assistance in resolving this issue, and no way to restore our previous purchase.
Poorly coded. Somehow Qg2# is wrong, but Qh1# is the solution. Mate is mate.
Using this app is hard (but enjoyable) work. The app performs flawlessly – teaching hundreds of challenging tactical problems. But getting better at Chess, a worthy goal, requires hours of hard work using tools like this. IOW a wonderfully designed tool.
This tactics trainer challenges you to think of the possibilities and sharpens your tactics skills.
The app has a ton of material, counterplay, and helps learn new concepts.
Since we've been using this app our play has improved.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.2
- Size: 42.85 MB
- iOS: 8.0 or later
- Languages: NL, EN, FR, DE, EL, IT, PL, PT, RO, RU, ZH, ES, ZH, TR
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [CHESSQUEEN INC]()
Last updated: 18th January 2018 | Genre: Puzzle, Education | Developer: CHESSQUEEN INC