Chess Opener app for iPhone and iPad
NEW
-- Over 7800 openings!
-- Added over 3000 openings from current GrandMaster games - Carlsen, Anand, Aronian.
-- Explorer mode now sorts results based on next move popularity.
-- Download Top 20 Openings!
-- Email current PGN
-- Improved defaults for user added openings
Opening Pros easy interface allows you to quickly learn over 7800 openings. Organized by their ECO classifications, each opening starts and plays like a normal chess game. Play as black or white, replay or take back moves - a hint feature shows the best move available from each position and will warn you when playing the wrong piece or moving to an illegal square.
Opening Pro has over 1300 opening variations of the Sicilian Defense, including many of the popular Dragon variations. In addition the hundreds of variations of the English opening, Opening Pro features many variations of Nimzo-Indian, Roy Lopez, Two Knights Defense, Four Knights Game, Scotch Game, French, Pirc, Caro-Kann, and Catalan, plus many more. Over 7800 openings in total! To view the list of openings in the current ECO, tap the Openings button on the bottom toolbar. To view openings in other ECO ranges, tap the Opening Systems button at the top of that menu.
The openings can be searched by entering any part of the opening name or variation. You can even search starting from any position in the algebraic chess notation of the opening.
There are two modes of play - Learn and Explorer. Learn mode forces you to play the selected opening without deviation. Explorer mode lets you play a normal game of chess without any move restrictions, showing you the available openings based on which piece you choose to move.
In Learn mode, after the opening is completed, you can continue play against the CPU, replay the same opening again, or select a different opening. And of course you can always replay moves to explore different alternatives and positions against the CPU.
Opening Pro is an invaluable learning tool that will improve your game.
Pros and cons of Chess Opener app for iPhone and iPad
Chess Opener app good for
Truly great app. I havent seen any other program like it. Invaluable for the club player especially.
Its like Glaurung, but with an openings reference. Seems to work very well.
One request: PLEASE add the ability to display Glaurungs analysis/evaluation as you go through (and/or beyond) the book moves. That would assist immensely with openings research. Cheers!
This is currently the best opening reference app on iPhone. I especially like the display of various branches of openings with percentages of their occurence and their names. I feel though the display window at the bottom is cramped and its hard to scroll the text with the finger there. Perhaps allowing landscape mode and getting this text on the side would help. Search feature would be nice too.
This is by far the best thing that I have found to improve my chess game. The ability to learn and diversify openings to gain a better understanding is key to improving your fame. With a very comprehensive AI to play against I can continually try out new things and view strategy from a logical perspective. This app is irreplaceable on my iPhone.
If you wanna learn your openings, this is perfect. My only issue is that it wish I could view it in landscape mode on my iPad Air. I hate using picture mode. I give five stars just for the program. I know theres no incentive to add landscape mode at this point, but the program is really useful.nah,mthey will add it.
After having looked for and tried several programs, this program comes out at the top of those I know for smartphones.
I would have given it five stars had it been a package with a program such as Shredder or Fritz - but that it does not have but it is very good. It takes a bit to get used to it though.
It does however have a lot of openings that can be chosen randomly as among the users favorites. This is very good.
Yes, the program is a must for a serious chess player who relies on his smartphone.
Some bad moments
For a full paid app, Doesnt seem like its been fully tested yet. For example, when choosing an opening system in the opening database, sometimes you can choose one opening system and sometimes multiple ones. If you choose multiple ones just go out and then back in again and only the last one is selected. This is a very simple bug to fix butbis very confusing to the user. Other simple things like having the same opening multiple times in the recently used list also seems unpolished for example (put at top of list and remove others of the same). Also encountered other lists withe text on top of other text making it unreadable etc. Custom openings also has bugs in it. Pls address these issues otherwise a solid foundation with potential. Also a great feature to add would be ability to select multiple openings and then practice correct response against multiple openings!
It was a very useful app but now it cracks down all the time on iPhone 3G.
The opening database is great, but...
Hints always lead to loss
Update: Thank you for the recent update. It no longer crashes from what Ive seen. Unfortunately it is still having an error when using the hint feature. Occasionally it will tell you take make an illegal/impossible move. Ive seen this in late game multiple times playing black. It will tell me to move the king to a space occupied/illegal. At this point it will only allow you to make a move for certain pieces.
Thank you for the program. I look forward to further improvements.
Very limited in depth. I was very disappointed. Mostly useless for me.
My version closes down automatically once I am done with the opening. The prompt says that I can continue the game but it simply closes the application . I do not know if it is a defect in my version or overall glitch in the program.
This is a terrible implementation. As soon as you are out of the opening book it crashes.
