Square Off Chess- Play & Learn

***UPDATE 3 - It took 3 months of going back and forth with Square Off before I decided to return my Grand Kingdom set. Then it took 5 requests to delete my account and the threat of legal action before Square Off finally deleted my account as requested. Square Off does not care about its customers. Avoid at all costs*** ***UPDATE 2 - Stay away from Square Off. They refuse to delete user accounts and claim that it would impact other users. They have no respect for customers or their data.*** ***UPDATE - I attempted to work with customer service multiple times, including emailing the CEO/Founder and nothing was properly resolved. Square Off does not care about its customers.*** Square Off has the worst customer service I have encountered in chess. The app has a range of issues from turning your phone into a battery draining slab of heat to not being able to abort games with unresponsive players without taking a loss on your record. The quality of the chess material that comes with the board is inconsistent and highly disappointing. The automated movement of the board is also hit or miss. Their customer service team only operates on India time so you are out of luck if you are anywhere else in the world if you want live support and when you can get in touch with them they do not care about the customer and will not solve you issue without you having to essentially fight someone to get it done. Worst chess app on the market and their products are pure hype.

This whole thing is super cool, I love using my board and playing, all that. However there’s a few major obvious problems with the app. 1) the AI has no sense of time management. It is almost trivially easy to beat the hardest AI over and over in 5 minute games if you avoid blundering and play fast. I even had a game that ended like this. The AI has 11 seconds left. It plays a move that means mate in one is unavoidable next move. I play a random move accepting my fate. The AI spends 5 seconds, then moves its king instead of playing mate in one. Mate in one is still unavoidable next move. It uses its last 6 seconds and loses on time instead of playing mate in one. This was the level 16 AI and that should not be possible. 2) whenever you pause and quit a game and go back in to it later, both the AI and the players times get reset. Really? That’s kind of obvious of an oversight. Other than that this is awesome though.

My son is in Chess Club so we got him this for Christmas and he LOVES it. The board is well made and the software works well enough that he can play the computer or other players online. However the app needs a lot of improvements to really earn 4 or 5 stars and reach the potential the makers promised. First, the challenge system needs to be more robust. Right now it’s hit or miss if you can get someone to accept a challenge and often a challenge notice comes up but when you open the app the challenge is not shown as active, even if the message just came in. The ability to teach or learn in computer only mode is vital and missing. Even just the ability to take back a move against the CPU would help. Also the ability to stream games (which is highly promoted in the company’s site and ads) does not work with the board. Streaming only works with the app which is not what is implied/promised in every video. Watching streaming on the BOARD is a must that must be solved. Other improvements like stats and friend only leaderboards would greatly enhance the player experience. Hopefully updates are coming soon. All in all, this is a great way for my son to play Chess when other opponents are not around, and the potential is very high if software improvements continue.