Last updated on January 16th, 2026 at 10:31 am
Mate in 2 Chess Puzzles – Puzzle Game Review
Mate in 2 Chess Puzzles is a Puzzle/Entertainment/Board game from Gano Technologies LLC, first launched in 22nd April 2010.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 70+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Mate in 2 Chess Puzzles Stand Out
The Ultimate mate in 2 moves chess puzzle app!
Sharpen your chess skills with Mate in 2 Puzzles! Beginners and experienced players will enjoy solving these chess problems!
This app has over 1200 interactive chess problems ranging from easy to harder puzzles that will challenge you and help improve your chess skills. The object is to finish each game by forcing a checkmate in 2 moves. The puzzles consist of a large number of classical puzzles collected from a variety of sources. These puzzles are fun to play and can be enjoyed at your leisure on your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
Mate in 2 chess problems are especially useful for learning to play chess or anyone wanting to improve their skills.
New features added in Version 2.0 include:
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Completely revamped chess engine that is much stronger
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Timing clock is displayed while you are working on each puzzle. How long you take to solve a puzzle is stored.
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New options: more chess piece sets (total of 7) and more colors schemes (total of 7) including wood and marble. (Improved the options menu as well)
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Social Gaming: Leaderboards to compare the number of puzzles you have solved with your friends and other players. Facebook integration – including the ability to post your progress and ask your friends for help on a puzzle.
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Universal app – works on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad – high resolution graphics all around (where supported).
For even more chess puzzle challenges check out these apps:
- Mate in 1 Puzzles
- Mate in 3 Puzzles
- Mate in 4+ Puzzles
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Mate in 2 Chess Puzzles is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 2nd January 2024
Recent improvements include:
- Latest iOS and iPadOS Compatibility updates
- Minor bug fixes
Download & Availability
Mate in 2 Chess Puzzles is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Mate in 2 Chess Puzzles 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:
One request would be to have a hint where you just indicate which piece to move, but not where it goes.
Perfect way to sharpen your brain. Tons of smart intriguing puzzles Simple but effective playing format. One of our favorites.
A great chess app that helps teach calculation, especially in complicated positions.
Great puzzles, really enjoying this app. But be warned, they are tough.
Fun to pass the time away, though.
Our spouse and we have competitions with each other and it's really enjoyable. The features in the app are great.
These are incredibly difficult. They are designed rather than taken from actual games. We have a collection of mate in 4 that we can relatively easily solve and we are stumped by these. So, once we get used tu them we're sure they'll provide a lot. Right now it's mostly frustrating. So if you feel similarly, we suggest Chess King's Mate in 3-4 and Chess Tactics Art (1400-1600) and (1600-1800). You'll like all three. Then maybe later we can solve these… C.
Awesome. Very mentally challenging.
We really enjoy this app. Sometimes we find it very hard to put down. We just know we'll do better on the next puzzle! We do wish that, after a puzzle is solved, we could reverse some black moves and try different responses. Sometimes it seems black may have made a poor choice, resulting in the mate.
Good chess problem app. We enjoy using it.
This is helping us improve our skills – thank you.
We've been working one or two if these puzzles every evening for several months. We typically spend between 10 and 30 minutes figuring each puzzle out. Very engaging.
We enjoying using mate in 2, we only wish that there was an option to play black against the white, because sometimes we're sure it's not a true mate in 2 game, only an error on blacks move.
1,200 puzzles of varying difficulty. Fantastic training. Must-buy if you want to get better at chess.
Lots and lots of puzzles with nice graphics.
Solid puzzles. Some are intermediate others advanced. What's weird is how the App sometimes skips a puzzle when going to the next one.
As a beginner, we bought this game to practice. The scenarios are unrealistic. In a lot of these the solution requires a move that doesn't make sense, but just happens to invoke the right response from the AI.it kinda felt like we were looking for the one random move that caused the AI to malfunction. Don't 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.
Mate in two has 1200 problems from very basic to incomprehensible. It is one of the few apps that has migrated from our old iPad (along h Star Walk and Periodic Table of the Elements) and that we still use. As a very inexpert chess player we can't comment on the accuracy of the puzzles and their provenance. It looks like a lot of them come from old journals. At any rate they are entertaining and do a pretty good job of demonstrating pins, revealed check, sacrificing the queen, etc. Beats the heck out of sudoku. Highly recommended.
We are very much an amateur, and we have not been able to solve any of the 20 problems we have worked on so far without using the hints. However, we very much enjoy studying the positions and trying to figure out how they work and why the opponents make the moves they do. It is very engaging, and we hope educational, to go back over them several times we don't know if the exercises will improve our playing, but we do know that they greatly increase our appreciation for the game and our respect for the masters. The graphics are excellent with nice options as to colors and styles, it is easy to retrace one's moves, the clock is unobtrusive, the hint button allows choosing the degree of help desired, and everything works smoothly and quickly (except for the occasional crash). We have solved all of the problems in Mate in One; they are merely entertaining and a nice ego boost, some rather clever given the parameter of leaving just a single move to consummate checkmate. If we end up getting Mate in Three, it will no doubt be to just sit back and enjoy the elegance of watching how the moves are made. Without doubt, these apps are worth much more than the measly buck they cost.
Great app, with an extensive selection of puzzles.
The puzzles are hard for a newbie like us, but we like it! :).
More clever, fun puzzles than we could ever solve! Once you get past the handful of "easy" problems, you get into the really clever, brilliant, fun puzzles ones that might well take you an hour to solve. We think there are something like 1000 puzzles? We are pretty sure there are more than we could ever do, and they're good ones too! There is one small feature that this app sorely needs: the ability to just freely move the chess pieces yourself. Part of why it is so hard to figure out how white can mate black in 2 moves is that you can't try a white move, and then try black's various responses for yourself. You can try a white move, and then the app will make black's move presumably black's best possible move but that's not the same effect, since it can lead to you accidentally "solving" a puzzle when you just meant to try out a theory. If they could fix that maybe by offering a Sandbox button, where you can then move the pieces freely this app would probably be worth $5. But still, 1000 clever chess puzzles for $1 easily deserves a 5-star rating! Additional note: we don't know why someone said the app won't give you the answers, because it will if you click the Hint button.
We were afraid this one was going to be full of trivial puzzles. Instead it has turned out to be quite fun and challenging.
Early puzzles are easy and then the end of the puzzles are very hard and they don't give you the answers and you can't move on so you get stuck.
Updated Review: May 7th, 2013 Reduce stars for no way to play and check alternative answers. We had thought that this program wasn't good. We couldnt solve many of the puzzles and had thought that they were wrong. Puzzle # 17 is a good example of this situation. We spent many hours on it till we set it up on chessgenius where it was solved it in 3 moves. BUT CHESSGENIUS WAS WRONG! The problem is that there are multiple solutions, but they are nevertheless all really mate in 2 moves. We found this out after the programs was updated and the author added a hint/solution option that was surely needed. After the first move, the second move can be multiple move depending on what the computer does. But it will ALWAYS be mate in 2. If they didn't add the hint button we would have never discovered this. So, many cudos and nuff respect to a great chess puzzle program. Everything thing else about the program is good. We like how it has the option to look like a real chess board. It doesn't look cheap. We give maximum stars for the effert that went into creating it. And sorry for our former negative review. Well that new hint button made the difference.
But very fun, and it feels good when you finally figure a puzzle out.
We like this app quite a bit. When ever we are bored we find ourselves testing ourselves against these puzzles instead apps that waste our time.
This, plus it's cousin, "Mate In 3," is by far the perfect "Fix" for Any true Chess addiction. When we are doing work and just stuck on something, or waiting for someone, these puzzles are great, they are challenging, as well as numerous. Perhaps the interface could be sharper, or more dynamic, but at $.99, you can't beat it. We give it 5 thumbs up! Steve LI, NY.
This is a big help with our play.
An excellent variety of problems. Highly recommended.
Exactly what we need to help deeper thought.
Excellent app, stop reading and start playing.
Good idea and layout for an app …. Excellent and expansive selection of two step chess puzzles …. Switch sides of board to see how good the app flows …. Could not find a bug.
Really excellent app and great featuresall we're looking for, except, since this is being used on the iPad as well as smart phones it needs to be usable in either landscape or portrait mode. We're sure that that is in the pipeline for some future rev, but at the moment it is our only gripe. Otherwise, thanks for hours of great puzzles.
Keeps track of problems solved and how long it took. Graphics are okay and app is reasonably easy to use.
A great app. Really challenges you.
Great app! Makes you think!! Tons of puzzles for a bargain price.
This app is absolutely worth buying. Definitely the best chess puzzle app we've found.
Excellent while waiting for opponents in Chess with Friends.
Excellent set of problems. Many configuration options. Easy to use.
Like being stuck in an elevator.
Challenging and smooth operation.
The mate in one is excellent also.
Excellent concept of mate in two. Enjoy playing the game. Good program but needs to fix bugs. At times the program freezes or it goes haywire. Needs to be restarted or reset.
We're not a great chess player, but the puzzles are interesting and difficult to boot! Every board has an "a-ha!" moment where it all makes sense. None are too difficult: it's only 2 moves for crying out loud.
This app has a wide variety of excellent two-move chess problems, with a built-in timer so you can see how long each problem takes you to solve. We have solved a few in less than a minute, but most take considerably longer, and some have kept us going for as long as a week. Great app.
Great app with some very challenging puzzles for beginners to advanced.
This is a great tactics builder. Beautifully written app, looks great and works great. We say try the free version to help figure out witch version or level your at. It is also a great mind puzzle like sudoku, crosswords, or rubik's cube.
3/12 still a nice solid tactic training full of challenge M2 puzzles. Pleasingly designed & runs smooth. Would be nice still to see maybe puzzle tracking by # of moves. We haven seen this feature elsewhere–maybe its too hard to program but sure would be useful in terms of visually tracking results. Was updated to run on iPad. Works great on tablet format! ORIGINAL REVIEW: This app we avoided at first due to lack of ratings n reviews. We took a chance since we're trying to do more daily puzzles to improve our horrible game n lack of tactical vision n it's only 99c. What a nice surprise! We only bought M2 but we are now open to the devs other products. Nice UI n vast collection of M2 puzzles. Some are quite easy for even us but there's plenty to pull from. We like the date stamp for completion. DEV: In addition to date tracking can u consider a feature to keep track of how many attempts it takes to solve? And maybe a running record of attempts by date? That would help our simple mind know if we're improving over time. Running on 3GS on OS4.1. Nice app! Thanks.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 4.4
- Size: 7.06 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Gano Technologies LLC
Last updated: 2nd January 2024 | Genre: Puzzle, Entertainment | Developer: Gano Technologies LLC