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Chess DroidFish Review

11.02.2011

Tags: android chess app, android fish chess, chess app, droid chess, droid fish, droidfish

Today I will do a review of one of the strongest free chess programs available for android smartphones: Droid Fish. This program does not have any fancy things like a high texture wooden board or special sounds effects like those of Chess Free. However, what DroidFish does and does really well is playing chess. The application is powered by a very powerful Stock Fish engine, which is a derivative of a commercially available all-famous Rybka. It is hard to precisely estimate the playing strength of Droid Fish, but I can certainly say that it’s way stronger than a Master’s.

When you open up a game it’s ready to play. The only things you need to specify are the playing strength of the engine, color and time. A neat thing about engine’s strength that it’s very flexible and adjustable with the increments of 0.1 % , from 0 to 100%. The options menu is pretty extensive and has variety of adjustments. For example it is possible to show the computer thinking lines, setup thinking time, enable time increment added after each move, display book hints, adjust pieces and squares’ colors and font sizes, etc. A very important function that was not available on Chess Free is the ability to save played games into pgn files and even include comments for the moves. It is also possible to load previously saved game, review and annotate it.

DroidFish has a build in opening book, which should be enough under most playing situations. However, if needed the app can use external opening book, which can be stored in the phones internal memory as well as on a SD card. Another useful feature of DroidFish is ability to setup a position and to give a computer analysis for it. Therefore, this app can be used as a portable analysis tool, similarly to a Pocket Fritz. The app supports various playing modes, you can play against a computer, you can play against a friend or you can watch two computers fight for the title of the strongest one.

Here are some screenshots of the Droidfish app: starting screen, options and middle of the game position. To start a new game you need to click the ‘M’ button, I had difficulties figuring that one out, looking in the menus didn’t yield much results.

I have played against DroidFish on the 51% of its strength and have posted the game below. The official website claims that DroidFish can search more than 15 ply deep on 1GHz CPU. I was running it on the dual CPU phone so we can expect the search depth to be even greater.

Pros

Very strong Stockfish Chess Engine with well adjustable playing strength
Ability to load/save/annotate “pgn” games
Support of external opening books
Position analysis mode
Overall versatility of colors and themes
Book hints during play
Comprehensive ‘settings’ menu
Simple looking interface
Multiple engine support (limited)
Being Free

Cons

Ambiguous menus are sometimes hard to navigate
Chess board looks a little bit small on my 4” screen
Cannot set separate time controls for two players
No support for move delay
No strengths to ELO correlation

More screenshots are shown below:

Wrap up:

DroidFish is a really good free chess app, probably one of the best currently available on Android Market. It is a really good choice for all sorts of chess players, from beginners to professionals. However, I feel that DroidFish falls somewhere in between ’professional’ and ‘for fun’ app. For fun app this program lacks high quality graphics, attractive sounds and a goofy engine. For a professional product it lacks things like online chess database access, threat search, multiple engine analysis, several variation parallel analysis, automatic annotation and chessbase format support as offered in Pocket Fritz.

Once again DroidFish is a really good entry level pro chess app and I recommend it to anyone who wants a free, strong chess rival with analysis and pgn support capabilities in your pocket.

Grade:

Engine Performance: 8.5
Graphics: 7
Options: 8
Overall 8– Great App!

You can download the Chess Free from Android Market or can scan the QR-code below with your phone:

Ready to play chess with DroidFish? Check out our store and articles:

Updated 04.10.2023

Comments:

raghavendra:

you can try for play magnus chess engine

Gene Kilburn:

After setting up a position, how do I make the còmputer make the first move as white? Thank you

neiihleh moahneh ghoshe:

Sir, I want to know that what is the exact elo rating of stockfish 8 64 & komodo 8 , combined with Driodfish 1.69

Christoph Koydl:

I havn't figured out how exactely save a game in pgn-format. It offered me File-Commander but I get no keyboard to name my game properly. The only message I get is 'This folder is empty'. Can someone give me a hand?Thanks.

Miguel:

Thank you very much for this amazing app! It is the best one, not only for the engine, but also for the user interface: it's nice, elegant and customizable.Thanks for the last version that runs in Android Lollipop without bugs.

Yury:

It's one of the disadvantages of the app. You can only setup the %-strength, but not an ELO strength. Generally speaking the time control should effect the ELO of the app. But if it's the same for both sides we can say it doesn't. ;-) 50% strength corresponds to about 1800-2000 ELO range. Check the game above.

Francesco:

I wanted to know in that case corresponds to 2000 elo app's strenght .. that is the time factor reasoning of the program does not affect the ELO rating? therefore I would like to know what the weather put in the settings to make sure you play at 2000 elo

eRick:

With this chess software DroidFish, I can say that this is the best training tool for handheld device. Because of this review, I gained my interest in DroidFish.... Thanks Mr.Yury..... (y)

Yury:

Stockfish is rated about 2700 as a phone app. A typical master is rated close to 2200, meaning that Stockfish will win more than 95% of the games. A better question to ask would be if it played against GMs in official Match. As a computer program the stoockfish is 3200 rated.

eRick:

One more thing Mr.Yury Markushin..... Does Stockfish had a previous match against a master player? Does it also have a previous game to a master player beaten? If it really does, we can say that many players can have a tune up match with droidfish from their pocket. I mean, we may not need to go in a place just to have tune up games as preparation for chess tournaments...... :-)

Yury:

Hello eRick, at 50% of it's strength it's playing at about 2000 ELO (also phone hardware dependent). It's non-linear though, since at 100% it's nearly 2600-2700 rated. I believe most players can use it for analyzes of the games, unless you need an absolutely precise evaluation. Or if say, you are preparing for a Match against Carlsen ;-)

eRick:

Is Droidfish recommended as training tool for chess players ranging from beginners up to professionals!?

Kiyoshi:

I have been using droidfish for a while now and I agree with you for both the pros and the cons.

Alfredo:

It's stronger than chessmaster gm edition.I tried it out with a 4.5 to 0.5

Samuel Christiawan:

Hi!Thanks for the review. Do you know hot to use endgame tablebase on Droidfish. I have put kqkr.gtb.cp4 in \mnt\sdcard\DroidFish\gtb but it does not seem to pick it.Thanks.