Comparison

Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles vs Openings Mastermind

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles

Enhance your chess defense skills with a structured course featuring 380 exercises on avoiding checkmate, interference, and support. This app acts as a personal coach, providing hints, explanations, and refutations for mistakes.

Highlights
  • 380 defense exercises
  • Hints and explanations
  • Refutation of mistakes
  • Play against computer
  • Rating monitoring
  • Offline play
Features
Read full description

The course includes 380 exercises on the following aspects of defense: Avoiding checkmate, Interference, Support This course is in the series Chess King Learn (https://learn.chessking.com/), which is an unprecedented chess teaching method. In the series are included courses in tactics, strategy, openings, middle game, and endgame, split by levels from beginners to experienced players, and even professional players. With the help of this course, you can improve your chess knowledge, learn new tactical tricks and combinations, and consolidate the acquired knowledge into practice. The program acts as a coach who gives tasks to solve and helps to solve them if you get stuck. It will give you hints, explanations and show you even striking refutation of the mistakes you might make. Advantages of the program: • High quality examples, all double-checked for correctness • You need to enter all key moves, required by the teacher • Different levels of complexity of the tasks • Various goals, which need to be reached in the problems • The program gives hint if an error is made • For typical mistaken moves, the refutation is shown • You can play out any position of the tasks against the computer • Structured table of contents • The program monitors the change in the rating (ELO) of the player during the learning process • Test mode with flexible settings • Possibility to bookmark favorite exercises • The application is adapted to the bigger screen of a tablet • The application does not require an internet connection The course includes a free part, in which you can test the program. Lessons offered in the free version is fully functional. They allow you to test the application in real world conditions before releasing the following topics: 1. Avoiding checkmate 1.1. Volume 1 1.2. Volume 2 1.3. Volume 3 1.4. Volume 4 2. Interference 3. Support

About

Openings Mastermind

Master chess openings with this app. Import studies, explore with advanced engines, and practice specific lines through repetition. Track your progress and improve your game.

Highlights
  • Import Lichess Studies or PGNs
  • Explore openings with Stockfish 15
  • Practice openings by repetition
  • Smart practice queue
  • Track learning progress
Features
Read full description

Get ready to take your chess game to the next level with Openings Mastermind, the ultimate chess opening app! Some of the features include: - Import Lichess Studies or custom PGNs - Explore openings with Stockfish 17 and the Lichess position database - Practice openings by repetition against your own custom openings database - Take advantage of the smart practice queue and improve your learning - Observe your learning progress in different openings With our app, you can take your opening game to the next level by practicing against the specific lines you want to master. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced player, our app is the perfect tool to help you improve your opening moves and become a better chess player. Planned Features: - Continue against engine, after study line ends - Analysis of your games from Lichess and Chess.com compared to your openings database

Screenshots

Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles4 screens
Openings Mastermind4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Openings Mastermind at none against Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles's 1. Openings Mastermind also leads on update cadence (fortnightly vs every 2 months). Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles's advantage is rating (4.8 vs 4.3) and ratings volume (30 vs 6). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Openings Mastermind asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles has 30 ratings behind it against 6, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles ships an update every 2 months, Openings Mastermind fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 3, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles versus Openings Mastermind: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMate Escape. Chess PuzzlesOpenings Mastermind
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (30 ratings) — better4.3 (6 ratings)
Positive reviews—50.0% of reviews
Number of ratings30 — better6
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsFortnightly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS8.0 — better18.6
Further details — not scored
Size42 MB88 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperChess KingChristian Heise

Customer experience

Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles

All ratings27 ratings
Positive92.6%
Neutral3.7%
Negative3.7%

Openings Mastermind

All ratings6 ratings
Positive83.3%
Neutral0.0%
Negative16.7%
Written reviews2 reviews
Positive50.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative50.0%

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles

One-time1
  • Full course$3.99
None

Openings Mastermind

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles free?
Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Openings Mastermind free?
Openings Mastermind is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles or Openings Mastermind?
Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles is rated higher. Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles averages 4.8 out of 5 from 30 ratings, while Openings Mastermind averages 4.3 from 6 ratings.
Do Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles or Openings Mastermind have ads?
Neither Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles nor Openings Mastermind shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles or Openings Mastermind?
Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles ships an update every 2 months, and Openings Mastermind fortnightly. Most recently, Mate Escape. Chess Puzzles was updated on November 6, 2026 and Openings Mastermind on November 3, 2026.

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