Comparison

Chess 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

Chess

Master defensive chess skills with over 3000 interactive exercises. This app acts as a personal coach, providing hints and explanations to improve your game. It's designed for beginners to consolidate fundamental defensive tactics.

Highlights
  • Over 3000 defensive exercises
  • Interactive coach with hints and explanations
  • Improve defensive tactics
  • Track ELO rating changes
  • Offline play capability
  • Play positions against computer
Features
Read full description

If you are a beginner, you just have to learn how to defend your pieces from being taken! Every chessplayer has to master and consolidate some basic defensive skills such as withdrawing or protecting a piece, interception or attacking an opponent's piece. Having consolidated your knowledge by doing a great number of exercises you will be able to improve your level of playing. This course includes more than 3000 exercises with lots of pieces on the board. Such a great number of exercises makes this course an excellent tool for quick training of chess beginners. 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 • Interactive theoretical lessons • 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. Retreat 1.1. Defend your knight 1.2. Defend your bishop 1.3. Defend your rook 1.4. Defend your queen 2. Defending with another piece 2.1. Defend your knight 2.2. Defend your bishop 2.3. Defend your rook 3. Taking an attacking piece 3.1. Defend your knight 3.2. Defend your bishop 3.3. Defend your rook 3.4. Defend your queen 4. Interception 4.1. Defend your rook 4.2. Defend your queen 5. Defending from mate 5.1. Level 4 5.2. Level 5 5.3. Level 6 5.4. Level 7 5.5. Level 8 5.6. Level 9 5.7. Level 10 5.8. Level 11 5.9. Level 12 6. Difficulty level 6.1. Level 1 6.2. Level 2 6.3. Level 3 6.4. Level 4 6.5. Level 5 6.6. Level 6 6.7. Level 7 6.8. Level 8 6.9. Level 9 6.10. Level 10 6.11. Level 11 6.12. Level 12

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

Chess4 screens
Openings Mastermind4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Chess at 88% against Openings Mastermind's 50%. Chess also leads on rating (4.6 vs 4.3) and ratings volume (60 vs 6). Openings Mastermind's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and update cadence (fortnightly vs every 4 months). 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. Chess sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Openings Mastermind asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Chess holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Chess has 60 ratings behind it against 6, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 88% of Chess's written reviews are positive against 50% of Openings Mastermind's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Chess ships an update every 4 months, Openings Mastermind fortnightly. Both last shipped on October 24, 2026.

Scorecard7 real differences · 3 level
Chess versus Openings Mastermind: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterChessOpenings Mastermind
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.6 (60 ratings) — better4.3 (6 ratings)
Positive reviews87.5% of reviews — better50.0% of reviews
Number of ratings60 — better6
Update frequencyEvery 4 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

Chess

All ratings59 ratings
Positive91.5%
Neutral3.4%
Negative5.1%
Written reviews8 reviews
Positive87.5%
Neutral0.0%
Negative12.5%

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

Chess

One-time1
  • Full course$3.99
None

Openings Mastermind

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Chess free?
Chess 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, Chess or Openings Mastermind?
Chess is rated higher. Chess averages 4.6 out of 5 from 60 ratings, while Openings Mastermind averages 4.3 from 6 ratings.
Do Chess or Openings Mastermind have ads?
Neither Chess nor Openings Mastermind shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Chess or Openings Mastermind?
Chess ships an update every 4 months, and Openings Mastermind fortnightly. Most recently, Chess was updated on October 24, 2026 and Openings Mastermind on October 24, 2026.

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