OpeningTree vs Chess Tactics for Beginners
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
OpeningTree
Explore chess openings with an extensive opening book and engine analysis. Analyze your games, create custom lines, and study moves from high-rated players. Accessible for visually impaired users.
- Extensive opening book
- Crafty engine analysis
- Load and analyze PGN games
- Create custom move lines
- Accessible for visually impaired
- Mark moves with colors
- Save board to PGN
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OpeningTree is a chess openings book based on high rated over the board games that lets one explore the tree of openings and engine analysis is available. Chess game files can be shared with the app to check against the book or to just view. Users can make their own side line moves and back up to return to main line. Also includes ten classic game collections and users can import their own games into the app. Game list are also searchable by tags. The updated opening book is compiled from 640,000 high rated games from recent years with both players rated 2300 and over. Just touch moves in the list or make moves on the board to see what the response is. The numbers next to moves indicate how many games resulted in wins-draws-losses. The idea comes from computer opening books as if we can open up the book and see what those moves are that people play in response to opening positions. Users do not pick an opening to study but start with the full tree. The analyze button on bottom right of board is to flip between viewing the openings move table or seeing Crafty engine analysis. +1.00 score means white is ahead a pawn. -1.00 score means black is ahead a pawn. There is a move now button to make the engine play the current best move if the users wants to try playing a position out against the engine. OpeningTree's board is accessible to the blind and visually impaired using Voice Over. With Voice Over enabled in device settings, tap on a square for info, double tap to select. Or choose from three move methods. When going forward in a loaded PGN game, moves will be announced on each tap of the forward button. Moves can be marked with colors(red, green, yellow) and colorizing a move at the end of a line will extend the line i.e. add move so it shows later. There is also an option to make a note on a position using the control bar. In the Actions menu if the user has imported a chess games file to the App, for example by opening a PGN file with OpeningTree from a mail attachment or download(long touch on the attachment/download for this option), a game from a PGN file can be loaded and checked against the book. If a user makes a new move, back up to the main line to return to the game. To ensure speed, it will only read/load a max of 5000 games. With bigger files users will only see first 5000 games. There is a Save Board to PGN option on the Actions menu. It saves the current moves to openings-user-games.pgn, a file OpeningTree will create on first save. Games are saved with opening name as white and black name to spot the lines in each game. This allows the users to export data out of the App such as favorite lines with the mail games option when looking at a game list. The App comes with six PGN game files that can be optionally installed when no PGN files have yet been opened by the App or the user has deleted their PGN files previously opened and likewise has none to access. If this is the case, this option shows when going to Actions -> load PGN. The files contain a mix of famous classical games, collections of former world champions Gary Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen's games and more recent games from two top ranked international tournaments. PGN stands for portable game notation. It's a file extension that can be used with text files that contain chess games in the PGN format. PGN files can be read by apps to display the games in them. If a game is loaded in the App one can then go to 'Actions -> show game data' to view the raw PGN text.
Chess Tactics for Beginners
Master chess tactics with over 1300 exercises designed for beginners. This app provides interactive lessons, hints, and explanations to improve your game. Track your progress and learn new strategies to win more games.
- Over 1300 training exercises
- Interactive lessons with hints
- Refutations for common mistakes
- Play positions against computer
- ELO rating tracking
- Offline access
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This course is based on a bestseller by the experienced coach Sergey Ivashchenko which became a sort of chess publishing sensation and sold over 200,000 copies. More than 1300 training exercises are intended for beginners, both children and adults. Elementary and simple tasks (1-, 2- and 3-way) are used as teaching material. 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. Mate in 1 1.1. Rook checkmates 1.2. Queen checkmates 1.3. Bishop checkmates 1.4. Knight checkmates 1.5. Pawn checkmates 1.6. Mate in 1 2. Winning material 2.1. Gain a rook 2.2. Gain a knight 2.3. Gain a bishop 2.4. Gain a queen 3. Draw 4. Mate in 2 4.1. Double check 4.2. Queen checkmates 4.3. Rook checkmates 4.4. Knight checkmates 4.5. Bishop checkmates 4.6. Pawn checkmates 5. Sacrifice material 5.1. Queen sacrifice 5.2. Rook sacrifice 5.3. Bishop sacrifice 5.4. Knight sacrifice 6. How to proceed?
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Chess Tactics for Beginners at Free against OpeningTree's $0.99. Chess Tactics for Beginners also leads on rating (4.8 vs 4.4) and ratings volume (1K vs 31). OpeningTree's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and chart position (#81 vs unranked). On review sentiment, update cadence, 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
Chess Tactics for Beginners is free to download; OpeningTree costs $0.99 up front. Chess Tactics for Beginners sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. OpeningTree asks for nothing beyond the download.
Chess Tactics for Beginners holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Chess Tactics for Beginners has 1K ratings behind it against 31, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 83% of OpeningTree's written reviews are positive against 87% of Chess Tactics for Beginners's.
OpeningTree ships an update every 2 months, Chess Tactics for Beginners every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | OpeningTree | Chess Tactics for Beginners |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.4 (31 ratings) | 4.8 (1K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 83.3% of reviews | 86.6% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 31 | 1K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 6 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | Free with in-app purchases — better |
| Best chart rank | #81 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 | 8.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 52 MB | 42 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Michael Adams | Chess King |
Customer experience
OpeningTree
Chess Tactics for Beginners
Bugs and requests
OpeningTree
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
Chess Tactics for Beginners
Reported bugs
3 issues- Exercises not working correctly
- App copying clipboard content
- Purchases not restoring properly
Requested features
4 requests- Add video tutorials
- Improve sound effects
- Provide more free content
- Allow disabling rating updates
In-app purchases
OpeningTree
No in-app purchases
Chess Tactics for Beginners
- Full course$12.99
Questions
Is OpeningTree free?
Is Chess Tactics for Beginners free?
Which has better reviews, OpeningTree or Chess Tactics for Beginners?
Do OpeningTree or Chess Tactics for Beginners have ads?
Which is updated more often, OpeningTree or Chess Tactics for Beginners?
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