Chess Problems Lite vs Chess School for Beginners
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Chess Problems Lite
Sharpen your chess skills with directmate puzzles. This app offers 10 interactive problems, from easy mate-in-one to challenging mate-in-four moves. It features a revamped chess engine, a timing clock, customizable piece sets and color schemes, and social leaderboards with Facebook integration.
- Directmate chess puzzles
- Mate in 1 to 4+ moves
- Revamped chess engine
- Timing clock for puzzles
- Customizable piece sets and color schemes
- Leaderboards and Facebook integration
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A lite version of the Ultimate mate in 1 to 4+ chess puzzle apps! Sharpen your chess skills! Beginners and experienced players will enjoy solving these chess problems! This app has 10 interactive chess problems ranging from easy mate in one move problems to very challenging mate in four moves. The object is to finish each game by forcing a checkmate in a given number of moves. In the full versions of this app there are a much larger number of classical puzzles collected from a variety of sources. These puzzles are fun to play and can be enjoyed at your leisure on your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Chess problems are especially useful for learning to play chess or anyone wanting to improve their skills. New features added include: ------------------------------ - Completely revamped chess engine that is much stronger - Timing clock is displayed while you are working on each puzzle. How long you take to solve a puzzle is stored. - New options: more chess piece sets (total of 7) and more colors schemes (total of 7) including wood and marble. (Improved the options menu as well) - Social Gaming: Leaderboards to compare the number of puzzles you have solved with your friends and other players. Facebook integration - including the ability to post your progress and ask your friends for help on a puzzle. - Universal app - works on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad - high resolution graphics all around (where supported). For even more chess puzzle challenges check out these apps: - Mate in 1 Puzzles - Mate in 2 Puzzles - Mate in 3 Puzzles - Mate in 4+ Puzzles
Chess School for Beginners
Learn chess with an interactive course designed for beginners of all ages. It offers structured lessons, practice exercises with hints and explanations, and theoretical sections with interactive board play. Improve your game with over 500 examples and track your progress.
- Interactive chess rules lessons
- Practice exercises with hints
- Theoretical sections with board play
- 500+ carefully chosen examples
- Progress tracking (ELO rating)
- Offline access
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This friendly interactive course is intended for both children and adult beginners. It is divided into 2 main sections: Chess rules and Playing. 500 carefully chosen, and in many cases designed, examples to help a student. This course is in the series Chess King Learn, 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. The program also contains a theoretical section, which explains the methods of the game in a certain stage of the game, based on actual examples. The theory is presented in an interactive way, which means you can not only read the text of the lessons, but also to make moves on the board and work out unclear moves on the board. 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. Introduction 1.1. Chess board 1.2. Chess pieces 1.3. Starting position 2. Pieces' moves 2.1. Rook 2.2. Bishop 2.3. Queen 2.4. Knight 2.5. King 2.6. Pawn 3. Capture 4. Pawn promotion 5. The relative value of the pieces 6. Castling 7. The role of the king, Check and mate 7.1. Check and mate 7.2. Mate 7.3. Mate in one move 7.4. Stalemate 7.5. Perpetual check 8. Notation (How to read moves) 9. Elementary capture 9.1. Winning a knight 9.2. Winning a bishop 9.3. Winning a rook 9.4. Winning a queen 9.5. Win a piece 10. Simple defense 10.1. Retreat 10.2. Defending with another piece 10.3. Taking an attacking piece 10.4. Interception 10.5. Defending from mate 11. Chess skills development 12. The role of the king. Continuation 12.1. Mate in 1 12.2. Mate in 2 12.3. Discovered check 12.4. Double check 12.5. Perpetual check 12.6. Stalemate 13. King and queen against a king 14. King and rook against a king 15. King and minor piece or a pawn against a king 16. Etiquette during a game
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Chess Problems Lite at none against Chess School for Beginners's 1. Chess Problems Lite also leads on review sentiment (83% vs 59%). Chess School for Beginners's advantage is ratings volume (647 vs 8) and rating (4.6 vs 4.3). 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
Both are free to download. Chess School for Beginners sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Chess Problems Lite asks for nothing beyond the download.
Chess School for Beginners holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Chess School for Beginners has 647 ratings behind it against 8, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 83% of Chess Problems Lite's written reviews are positive against 59% of Chess School for Beginners's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Chess Problems Lite ships an update every 7 months, Chess School for Beginners every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and October 21, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Chess Problems Lite | Chess School for Beginners |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (8 ratings) | 4.6 (647 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 83.3% of reviews — better | 58.8% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 8 | 647 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 7 months | Every 3 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 | 8.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 7 MB | 64 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Gano Technologies LLC | Chess King |
Customer experience
Chess Problems Lite
Chess School for Beginners
In-app purchases
Chess Problems Lite
No in-app purchases
Chess School for Beginners
- Full course$7.99
Questions
Is Chess Problems Lite free?
Is Chess School for Beginners free?
Which has better reviews, Chess Problems Lite or Chess School for Beginners?
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Which is updated more often, Chess Problems Lite or Chess School for Beginners?
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