Chess Tactics Pro (Puzzles)

A lot of the puzzles are really straight forward and good for beginner and intermediate players. What frustrates me the most about the puzzles is that several of the hard puzzles have more than one winning solution; backed by computer analysis. Sometimes you can play a move that absolutely wins, but it’s not the “best” line. Let’s be honest, if one line is +10, and I go with the line that’s +8, they’re both winning. In my mind, a puzzle should only have one “winning” solution. Additionally, there are some puzzles that are mate in x, and you can be wrong if you choose a mating line that takes more moves than the intended solution, i.e., The puzzle may be a mate in 3, but you choose a line that’s mate in 4. It really doesn’t matter. Checkmate is checkmate. I really like this app and have been using it for a long time; I don’t want my frustrations to dismiss that fact. It would beneficial (in my opinion) to introduce alternative correct moves that give the user a chance to find the best solution rather than flat out calling it wrong.

I enjoy this app somewhat, however it has one big flaw: the categorization of puzzles as “easy”, “medium”, and “hard” is way off. For example, I just did a “medium” puzzle in which determining the correct solution required you to deduce that if black played f6 in response to white’s first move, it would be mate in 9, and so black would instead play Qxg5, and give up the queen for a knight. Really? Seeing a 9 move checkmate is “medium”?? And this isn’t a rare case. Most medium puzzles seem to be around this same level of difficulty. And yeah I get it, I’m not that good, I admit it. However, those of us who want to get better would be better served by having more tactics problems that fall between mate-in-one and 9 move look-aheads. They need about 8-10 difficulty levels, and it should be based on how many moves ahead you need to see in order to solve. Something that you need to see 9 moves into the future should be pretty high up on the difficulty scale, not “medium”. Aside from that frustration, the app is decent, and it works well, and I mess around with it almost every day. Ps: one other small nit: I would rather have zero mate-in-one or mate-in-two problems. The app styles itself as a “tactics” app, but to me, a checkmate problem isn’t training me in “tactics”. I would rather see more forks, skewers, discovered attacks, pins, removal-of-guard problems. Not that checkmate problems aren’t fun, I just need more practice with those other things.

I always return to this app for tactics. Probably the best engine in the store for analyzing your games. 5 stars because even with what I explain below, it is better than all the others. If I could give one improvement, it would be to report tactic bugs. I have ran into 2 out of hundreds so this is a small thing) where there was an equal move, or only worked because the wrong move was played during the sequence by the app. For instance, #50 of the easy set. The queen moving to f5 after you play the bishop capture allows you to mate with rook. A much stronger move for black would be bishop to f5, black loses the queen, but after bishop takes rook black is only down 3 points. Running the engine allows another 40 moves before a forced mate by white. Anyway, good job devs. Overall 5/5