Chess vs Openings Mastermind
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Chess
Enhance your chess skills with over 1500 tactical exercises drawn from real games. This app provides hints, explanations, and refutations to help beginners improve their play and learn new combinations. It acts as a personal coach, adapting to your progress and offering interactive lessons.
- Over 1500 tactical exercises
- Hints and explanations
- Refutations of mistakes
- Interactive theoretical lessons
- Progress monitoring (ELO rating)
- Offline play
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If you are a beginner, you just cannot afford to give away your piece in 1 move, presuming, of course, that you wish to improve your play! Another thing you cannot afford is to miss a chance of grabbing an undefended piece of your opponent's! This course includes more than 1500 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. The course is intended for players who are already acquainted with the rules of the game. Even if you study and solve only 20% of exercises you are sure to improve your chess skills and not to miss a chance to take an undefended piece in your practical game! All the exercises are taken from practical games and arranged according to the names of pieces and difficulty levels. 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. Part 1 1.1. Winning a knight 1.2. Winning a bishop 1.3. Winning a rook 1.4. Winning a queen 2. Part 2. Win a piece 2.1. Level 1 2.2. Level 2 2.3. Level 3 2.4. Level 4 2.5. Level 5 2.6. Level 6 2.7. Level 7 2.8. Level 8
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.
- Import Lichess Studies or PGNs
- Explore openings with Stockfish 15
- Practice openings by repetition
- Smart practice queue
- Track learning progress
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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
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Chess at 100% against Openings Mastermind's 50%. Chess also leads on rating (4.5 vs 4.3) and iOS requirement (8.0 vs 18.6). Openings Mastermind's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and update cadence (fortnightly vs every 6 weeks). On price, ratings volume, 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
Both are free to download. Chess sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Openings Mastermind asks for nothing beyond the download.
Chess holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 4.3. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 11 and 6 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 100% of Chess's written reviews are positive against 50% of Openings Mastermind's.
Chess ships an update every 6 weeks, Openings Mastermind fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on September 10, 2026 and September 19, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Chess | Openings Mastermind |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (11 ratings) — better | 4.3 (6 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better | 50.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 11 — better | 6 |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 8.0 — better | 18.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 42 MB | 88 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Chess King | Christian Heise |
Customer experience
Chess
Openings Mastermind
In-app purchases
Chess
- Full course$3.99
Openings Mastermind
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Chess free?
Is Openings Mastermind free?
Which has better reviews, Chess or Openings Mastermind?
Do Chess or Openings Mastermind have ads?
Which is updated more often, Chess or Openings Mastermind?
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