Last updated on January 31st, 2026 at 02:42 am
SmallFish Chess for Stockfish – Entertainment Game Review
SmallFish Chess for Stockfish is a Entertainment/Strategy/Board game from Ted Wong, first launched in 25th July 2013.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 4,315+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes SmallFish Chess for Stockfish Stand Out
SmallFish is a project based on the Stockfish chess engine. It uses the latest Stockfish chess engine (Stockfish 17.1), rated about Elo 3600+ and is the strongest chess app on the App Store.
SmallFish offers you three distinct ways to improve your game. You can review your game with comments, or study how Stockfish thinks, or track your progress. No in-app purchase, no ads, no data tracking.
SmallFish is simply amazing. It's small but powerful, you'll be surprised.
Features
- Blunder checking
- Multiple line analysis
- Graphical evaluation of your game
- Game previews
- Dark mode support
- Endgame tablebase
- Opening books
Why not just download and try it yourself?
This Entertainment game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, SmallFish Chess for Stockfish is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 18th December 2025
Recent improvements include:
Added compatibility for iOS 26
Download & Availability
SmallFish Chess for Stockfish is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get SmallFish Chess for Stockfish 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:
Just got this cool little chess app. We're using it primarily to play over some GM games that are included. Here's something that may save you some time & gnashing of teeth: if after loading a game the menu has disappeared & you need it back, just tap on a player's name and the menu reappears.
Exactly wash at we were looking for, love the functionality.
This is a very lightweight and uncluttered program that is good for analyzing games quickly. We also use it mostly for entering games quickly from a scoresheet and then emailing them to later analyze in chessbase. For a few versions the email game functionality was broken which meant we could no longer use it for that. We're happy to see that in the latest version that is now fixed.
As the title states, the app would greatly improve if they added an option for the engine to play against itself.
Dear developers, we've been loving this app but after saving our most recent game the app crashed and it won't reopen. We can't find an email address to address these concerns. Please fix if it's a bug in the latest version. Thanks.
It's a good app but lacks the option of playing itself.
Interface is not as good as Stockfish, but its engine is more up to date. Coordinates on board are too big. No way to paste pgn text then load that pgn text into a playable game.
This is by far the strongest chess app you can get for the iphone. Very great for analyzing your games.
We like it. Play hard and it let u see his moves that can help improve opening when no knowing what to play.
Please fix it soon because it was truly the best chess game.
Thanks for this app! We think we've learned a lot about how to play and look forward a few steps to see consequences of moves. We wish you could run two games on different "tabs" or something so you could explore two different variations on the same game.
The best app ever. Thank you!! Silvio 3/31/15.
Now and behold the updates for this app actually make it better. One of the few apps that is consistent, new design is also welcomed. Fresh and easy to use. Being able to play the SF DD is a big bonus. We compared it the official app thus is so much better. Small fish is fast strong and well designed. The official app is checkmated!!! Infinity stars if possible! We love this app.
This has to be the best chess app ever.
This app delivers what the description states, and who could ask for more? A strong chess engine that assists you with move suggestions and in game analysis.
We got this app because it uses the latest stockfish engine (v5.0) where as stockfish for iOS is only on v2.x. We find the app polished and has modern features not on other highly rated apps which are becoming dated, like shredder. We are very happy to get this great app for free. Thank you.
We like it , thanks to make it free , we appreciate your time and effort.
We like how it gives percentages of each move and knows all the book openings. We've played this against the Magnus app and this one wins. Fun to play them against each other.
This app is amazing as far as the quality of its engine. SmallFish beats everything with ease. Our main complaint is that we wish there were more options as far as customization and themes. In addition, it would be very helpful if this app teaching tools incorporated in it. Other than that, this app is definitely the best chess app out there, and we would recommend it to everyone.
- No untimed mode. 2. Cannot resign game. 3. Emailing game does not work. Crashes. 4. It would be nice to have analysis done on a game and get comments on mistakes made.
Amazing chess app. It's hard to beat. Could use a little polish though.
This is very clever version and need a lot of brain juice. Love chess.
This is an excellent game to learn how to play chess. We were looking for a game like this for a long time. Good job.
Creator is definitely a chess genius. We will keep this for long.
Thanks for the update which solves all issues. SmallFish is simply the best much better than the official Stockfish app!!!!! Thanks that fixed our iPad issue.
Great app works really well, but we could not figure out how to add comments. Also we wish you could post an entire game to Facebook or twitter and not just on position.
This is just like the real chess game. We're really having fun. Did we mention that it has less ads.
We can't even imagine how sophisticated the algorithm behind this chess game must be. This is an outstanding chess game.
Overall this is a fantastic chess app. One bug that has been present for several versions is this: Play a game vs Stockfish with clocks set to 5 minutes for the whole game (any time control where the clock counts down will do). Play several moves and once Stockfish starts thinking for itself, let your clock run out. It is nice that Stockfish will let you still continue to play, but once your clock runs out and then you play your next move, Stockfish will make each of its moves instantly, without any time used. And the moves it makes seem to be full strength instead of moves that are consistent with the rating you have selected to limit Stockfish playing strength (we play with rating set to 1500-1600) and these instant moves by Stockfish seem to be much too strong for a 1500 player and are indeed much stronger than moves made by the program previous to our clock running out. If the developer would fix this bug, we would have to give it five stars.
It keeps resetting our games!!! Wth! We like this app but now it won't save any games. Needs fixed badly.
Great for analysis! We especially appreciate that you can identify where a game started going badly for one side. Also impressive when stepping through a master game is that the suggested move is often what the chess master actually chose. Love it! We'd like more sound options. Thanks for the update to the Stockfish 5 engine.
Can not even open the game, with this stupid tutorial steps. Bad 1, need to get fixed!!!! DO NOT PURCHASE IT !!! If you do you get our point.
Please fix pawn promotion, otherwise good.
Great app. 5 stars easy but latest update broke edit position feature. Just a heads up,for,the developer.
We don't know if it's our phone or the app but it randomly freezes. Overall it is a great game , very fun and kinda challenges you to think a bit.
Powerful game with great features.
Easy to use, of course it's the powerful stockfish engine so there's that.
It's a good chess game overall. The menu was kinda hard to find at first though. Other than that, it's well implemented.
If u love chess u will love this app.
Interface can be more attractive, but app is good anyways.
Este um aplicativo muito bom. Aprendi muito com ele e tem muitos recursos como ver as dicas de novas jogadas, salvar e carregar jogos, etc. Sugesto para correes futuras: jogando com 2 jogadores, no foi possivel promover peo na casa b8. H uma falha no programa. Apesar disso recomendo app. Bom divertimento.
We noticed this app while downloading Magnus Carlsens game. This is a quick comments. We were weak, and we gave into the social media. The popularity from Carlsens app brought it here and then we were slowly sucked in. The concept of the app was simple enough, reading the description we were innocent. Simply play chess. It was easy until we played. We were so wrong, such a wrong misfortunate soul. Endless checkmates after checkmates everything becomes smashed together. We dont know about you, but we cant truss someone with an eye like that. When Isee it we will fear the feel itself. The game is brilliant. It brings your chess up to the next level. As soon as you think youre doing good, the pieces will ruin you. The horror of feeling confident nd the n it being crushed has no bounds in the game.
Its a grate app! But always crashed in our iphone 4, ios 7. Please change it! Thank you.
Thanks for the strong stockfish dd. Stable and good.
Great app! Thanks for adding under promotion. Love the graph.
It's one of the best chess app with so strong engine.
The options menu needs more clarification. Would love if it could be just as strong as Houdini. Also it crashes when we're in Analysis mode and we don't make a move it suggest. This white circle comes on the screen and the app closes. Fix it please. KEEPS CRASHING and we have to reinstall the app.
Really want to try it out after reading all the good reviews, however it will not open on our iphone, stuck on the navigation instruction page and freeze. Uninstall and reinstall did not help.
Good job. Ignore the one claiming the game doesn't work. It does… They just don't know the rules!!! Updated for iOS 7. The app now crashes if we play the Kings Indian.
Everything is good. But variations is missing.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 18.10.0
- Size: 181.45 MB
- iOS: 14.0 or later
- Languages: AR, HY, CA, CS, DA, NL, EN, FI, FR, DE, EL, HE, HU, ID, IT, JA, KO, MS, NB, FA, PL, PT, RO, RU, ZH, SK, ES, SV, TH, ZH, TR, UK, VI
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [Ted Wong]()
Last updated: 18th December 2025 | Genre: Entertainment, Strategy | Developer: Ted Wong