Last updated on February 9th, 2026 at 08:50 am
OpeningTree – Chess Openings – Board Game Review
OpeningTree – Chess Openings is a Board game from Michael Adams, first launched in 6th June 2014.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 30+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes OpeningTree – Chess Openings Stand Out
OpeningTree is a chess openings book that lets one explore the tree of openings and Crafty engine analysis is available. Chess games can be optionally loaded to check against the book or to just view. Users can make their own side line moves and back up to return to main line.
The updated opening book is compiled from 640,000 high rated games from recent years with both players rated 2300 and over. Just touch moves in the list or make moves on the board to see what the response is. The numbers next to moves indicate how many games resulted in wins-draws-losses. The idea comes from computer opening books as if we can open up the book and see what those moves are that people play in response to opening positions. Users do not pick an opening to study but start with the full tree.
The analyze button on bottom right of board is to flip between viewing the openings move table or seeing Crafty engine analysis. +1.00 score means white is ahead a pawn. -1.00 score means black is ahead a pawn. There is a move now button to make the engine play the current best move if the users wants to try playing a position out against the engine.
OpeningTree's board is accessible to the blind and visually impaired using Voice Over. With Voice Over enabled in device settings, tap on a square for info, double tap to select. Or choose from three move methods. When going forward in a loaded PGN game, moves will be announced on each tap of the forward button.
Moves can be marked with colors(red, green, yellow) and colorizing a move at the end of a line will extend the line i.e. add move so it shows later. There is also an option to make a note on a position using the control bar.
In the Actions menu if the user has imported a PGN file to the App, for example by opening a PGN file with OpeningTree from a mail attachment or download(long touch on the attachment/download for this option), a game from a PGN file can be loaded and checked against the book. If a user makes a new move, back up to the main line to return to the game. To ensure speed, it will only read/load a max of 5000 games. With bigger files users will only see first 5000 games.
There is a Save Board to PGN option on the Actions menu. It saves the current moves to openings-user-games.pgn, a file OpeningTree will create on first save. Games are saved with opening name as white and black name to spot the lines in each game. This allows the users to export data out of the App such as favorite lines with the mail games option when looking at a game list.
The App comes with six PGN game files that can be optionally installed when no PGN files have yet been opened by the App or the user has deleted their PGN files previously opened and likewise has none to access. If this is the case, this option shows when going to Actions -> load PGN. The files contain a mix of famous classical games, collections of former world champions Gary Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen's games and more recent games from two top ranked international tournaments.
PGN stands for portable game notation. It's a file extension that can be used with text files that contain chess games in the PGN format. PGN files can be read by apps to display the games in them. If a game is loaded in the App one can then go to 'Actions -> show game data' to view the raw PGN text.
This Board game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, OpeningTree – Chess Openings is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 26th August 2025
Recent improvements include:
Increased opening database by 100K newer games
"Save Board to PGN" option now writes in standard PGN format not algebraic
Download & Availability
OpeningTree – Chess Openings is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get OpeningTree – Chess Openings 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:
Great app, but please provide the names of the openings.
We use this app to help learn chess moves we wish however it could tell us what the actual openings were called and the defenses we play so we can better get a grasp on what Im playing and our play style.
When we come back from our tournament then we can analyze it so that we can see how good or bad we played.
Very nice, simple. Does exactly what we were looking for. We hope the author will expand its features.
Surprised that this app has not been suggested as a must have tool for the serious chess player. It is important not only as a method to study openings but also to analyze the game.
Very useful app, but you need to label all of the columns in the move table. If that number to the far right is a percentage, we need to know what is it the percentage of.
Please add a feature like arrow button to just press it for move that analysis movements its easier to use thank you.
Well we have not been able to find these in any app till now.
You must get this. Go to load PGN in actions and look at all the games they have for free to check out.
We have been looking for an opening app for a while. Finally we feel we found it. It is great! Gives user a lot of freedom to try out and save moves. Constructive feedback some features are not intuitive such as saving games. Somehow ability to save different lines of same opening is missing we are yet to figure out color coding scheme and what is the purpose of importing other games But regardless a wonderful app. Thank you.
New computer play mode with move now is great. We can play a line out or just make computer move rather than making it's moves to see next move. Updated book is nice for some lines that had poor coverage in the old book. Maybe more book updates can be done in the future.
We like the flexibility to control moves and then go back to the program making the moves Very good instruction while playing.
Perfect app inlove this komodo chess engine.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.30
- Size: 51.92 MB
- iOS: 9.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, IT, ES
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [Michael Adams]()
Last updated: 26th August 2025 | Genre: Board | Developer: Michael Adams