Last updated on January 22nd, 2026 at 06:10 am
Simple chess board – Strategy Game Review
Simple chess board is a Strategy/Board/Utilities game from Luis López Sebastián, first launched in 5th July 2012.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 67+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Simple chess board Stand Out
A simple chess board and a chess clock without movement restrictions. Free movement as a real board.
Current features are:
• Move pieces freely, add or remove them.
• Undo/Redo last movement.
• Rotate board and/or pieces.
• Use checkers game pieces.
• Save/load positions for later use, or delete them when you don't need them anymore (swipe over them). Starting positions for chess and checkers are available.
• Use a chess clock where you can configure initial time, move time increment, increment after a number of movement, hourglass time, …
• Set time independent for black and white if required.
• Save/load time settings for later use. Already available some common times.
• Tweet your current position.
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Simple chess board is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 5th December 2023
Recent improvements include:
Fixed a bug in the last version
Download & Availability
Simple chess board is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Simple chess board 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:
Only one thing we would like to see added. Being able to use this as a scoresheet when playing a regular game of chess o n this or another board. Instead of writing down move on a score sheet you could just make the moves on this board as well. The '' on a iPad??? Be able to export the game to analyze. Please make our dream come true! Still like it a lot, but how do you get the keyboard up to enter text and save a position.
Easy to use, clear graphics. An excellent study tool.
When going through chess books and they explore different lines, you can back up to a particular starting point. No engine or help-it is what it says , just a simple board. One addition that would be nice is a move counter so you know if youre on track with what youre studying.
One observation – the chessmen are not bound by the rules (we.e., they can move anywhere), so learners may find that misleading.
No frills, just necessary functions. With this app, its easy to play through a recorded game, resetting pieces as needed to try variations. It would be a great teaching tool as well, or a way to play over the board with a tablet. We havent seen anything else as straightforward and functional for these purposes.
Excellent and simple to take a game with you, save easily.
When going through chess books and they explore different lines, you can back up to the starting point. No engine or help-it is what it says , just a simple board. There seems to be a save position function, but we cant seem to figure out how that works.
As near perfect as can be for practice drills etc. Once you get used to its quirks. Would be nice if it would set up longitudinally instead of horizontally.
Allows you to simply use this just like a regular chessboard.
This is easily the most human chess game on the App Store. Playing a computer is fun and all but this allows us to play multiple casual games at once via video chat and email. Or play in the park, the bus, camping, or the beach with a friend without losing any pieces or having them knocked over. The ability to save the board is especially nice because it allows us to switch between multiple games without having to take photos or own multiple chess boards.
We don't need analysis, hints, move dots, just an electronic chessboard that can be saved. On iOS enter a name in the text box, tap 'enter'. Enter the same name and they will each be listed as a history. Delete unneeded boards by swiping left and tap delete.
We can see a few moves ahead when playing chess online, but to really examine all the possibilities it helps to be able set up the board as you want. This one does the trick.
We can play through the games of the masters and save them, learning more efficiently than with a board. We save our own games and replay to see our mistakes. Its helping our game more than any other app. Thank you.
Great board for use while holding a book looking at lines. The write a review tab has trouble so if developer fixed would likely get more good reviews which are deserved.
We don't have the visualization skills to read through a chess game without a board. If we have our iPad or our iPhone, this program does the trick. Same with studying end games from a book or website. With a number of moves between diagrams, this program lets us follow along move by move. We know that you can do the same in a playing program by setting up human vs human and setting up the position, but with this program, it is super easy and convenient.
Having just a chess board where pieces can easily be moved around to set up practice positions is a great feature of this app…who needs another chess computer with so many others out there? So this app in all its simplicity is so welcomed and unique! However, it loses points for lacking two main features…no portrait view on iPad and the board alone cannot expand to fill the entire screen… If author fixes these, this program would be perfect for all who study chess.
It just has a simple, charming utility. We use it on our iPad with a split screen and whatever chess book we're reading so we can recreate all the chess diagrams on the page.
Somhow it keeps starting the setup with the kings and queens on wrong squares?! Also, we were using it to keep track of a long game and some piece positions shifted on us?! We love just having a board we can move pieces around on. We'd like it even more if all other features were eliminated.
Handy for playing or for studying positions. Easy to use. But there is no Help, and, when you tap Save, it fails with the message "You must insert text". There is no way that we can find to insert any text. We imagine the text it wants is a name for the position.
We would love this for analysis it the timers take up too much of the screen.
We use this frequently in our chess studies as a simple chessboard to review positions and other games. This app clearly serves it's purpose. The only problem we foresee is how to delete saved games and board Set Ups once you no longer need them. There's probably an easy way to do this. But we don't know what that is at this point. Otherwise this is a great app.
Just a chessboard (also does checker). Let's you rotate black pieces so they look opposing. Let's you scroll back and forth through previous moves . Not fancy graphics, but who cares.
First of all, this app does everything its name suggests. It fills a need for us, for study or following books, and — with the included clock (a nice surprise!) — for playing impromptu timed games. Another advanced/unexpected feature is the ability to save positions. We do agree that more board color options would be welcome, but the one included is serviceable. We don't know the author's future plans, but it would be even more impressive if he added such things as variations and importing or saving and exporting PGN records of games and variations. However there's nothing wrong with choosing to not go to that level, especially if it doesn't pay.
While the interface is not pretty, this is the best chess app we could find on the App Store for study purposes. Other more polished apps with chess engines are terrible for many study purposes due to their inability to allow illegal moves and insistence on making the user play the computer. When having a chess book open and needing to study an example, many times we have needed to setup an illegal position. This app was the only one we could find for this purpose.
We were looking for a game that allowed us to play some beginner chess games such as farmer and pigs or pawn wars and this app was perfect as it allows you to set the board up how you want and choose the pieces you want. This will be a handy set for traveling or when we want to play with our son and avoid the little grabbing hands of our youngest. We gave it 4 stars because, as other reviewers have said, the black against the brown can be a little hard to see. Other than that it was perfect for what we wanted.
We finally found a chess game with a timer but needs to have a bit better graphics.
1) The board view is pathetic. You can barely see the black pieces on the black squares. Please do correct immediately by changing the hue for the black squares. That should be pretty simple! Please correct immediately. 2) The other major problem is the dragging of the pieces onto a blank board. You have to try 3 to 6 times before the piece next to the board is finally "grabbed" so you can drag it onto the board ! 3) The representation of the pieces next to the board is so ridiculuously small that you never know if the intended piece is grabbed or the one next to it. The buttons for the clock could be made smaller in order to make more room to make the pieces next to the board larger. Please correct as soon as possible, otherwise this will be another application that is not even worth the aggravation. The intention of the app is good but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
This is very useful to us for composing chess problems and study them. The ability to save the position and delete it when necessary is great . Extremely helpful.
This app allows illegal moves in chess and checkers.
This is exactly what we needed for studying opening theory. It would be nice if the board could be a bit bigger (maybe by making the timers optional), but this is a minor complaint. Highly recommended.
Allows you to play timed chess games with a friend and even rotate pieces for easy viewing. You can also customize the clock per player. Just wish they allowed you to change the chess set to make it easier to view the opponents pieces. Great free app though.
We were about to buy a set, but saw this app. You can set up the board in just about any way. Includes chess clock and you can save games to have multiple games.
This was pretty close to exactly what we were looking for. Just a chess board that we could put the pieces were we wanted them. We would like it if the board would orient itself to the Ipad. Also if it was easier to flip the board. We did not need the clock or the checkers.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.2.3
- Size: 8.96 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: CA, EN, ES
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Luis López Sebastián
Last updated: 5th December 2023 | Genre: Strategy, Board | Developer: Luis López Sebastián