5 Reasons to Have a Chess App on Your Smartphone
Chess is an ancient game created more than 1500 years ago. Smartphone is a relatively new technology which is roughly 20 years old (believe it or not). What if the two combined together and can be carried in your pocket all the time? Isn’t it amazing? Here is why you should have a chess app on your phone:
Reason #1: Solving tactics
How many times have you find yourself in a situation when you have to wait for something or someone with nothing to do? Surely you could play AngryBirds or CandyCrusher on your phone. But, instead of wasting your time like that you could, in fact, invest it in your chess.
Many modern chess apps come with a build-in tactics trainer. This is a perfect possibility to turn these 10-15 boring minutes into a good chess training. 15 minutes doesn’t look like a lot of time, but if you do it 10 days in a row, it’s already two and a half hours of pure tactics.
Reason #2: Playing against the engine
It may be stressful for some players to play against a full blown 2600 rated chess engine app. The result is predetermined. Most chess apps, however, have an adjustable strength level so that any chess player from 100-3000 ELO could have a fair game.
Some players complain that they cannot play enough chess due to a busy schedule, etc. Trust me, if you have a chess app on your phone and if you enjoy chess, you will definitely find time to play it. Remember, playing chess is a necessary component for improvement.
Reason #3: Playing against your friends
This is another awesome possibility that some chess apps allow. You can play chess with your friends either through internet, Bluetooth or on a single device.
Reason #4: Analyses board
Having a chess app on your Smartphone gives you an ability to use a virtual chess board anywhere, anytime. Say, you want to browse through the chess game you are reading about in a magazine but have no chess board around. Sure, you can probably go through the moves in your head, but wouldn’t it be much easier to analyze the game using the app’s neat chess board?
I think so!
Reason #5: Chess engine
Just imagine you have just finished playing a game and you’re dying to find out if the sacrifice (?!) you avoided was sound or not? Of course, you can (and actually should) analyze the game yourself and try to find the answer on that question.
But, to check your variations and ideas the machine is your best friend, and has the last word.
Read more about chess apps:
SmallFish or Stockfish on iPhone/iPad is actually a really great analysis engine and plays incredibly strong chess too. The only downside is that you will likely want to have your phone plugged into power while you are running these engines.