Best iphone chess app?

This is awesome.  Thanks, Tord.  Can't believe you're giving it away.  :-)

I really like the way it shows its opening book percentages...  etc.

@Tord

Glaurung is AWESOME, I'm STUNNED, I didn't expect something like THAT! I mean look, it's a 1.0, it's free, and it's already better than anything out there. It's not only about the strength I'm talking about, but about the features. It can do ANYTHING ChessGenius does and even more than that: play style adjustment, opening percentage, player name, one tap to flip the board... I'm speechless, CONGRATULATIONS Tord! I'll send you a postcard for this! :-)

I see that Glaurung - I'm still to read that Tolkien novel that apparently inspired you :-) - is also bigger than both ChessGenius and tChess Pro, even counted together. 4,5 MB sounds like a solid database to me, which brings so much variety in the openings. I only played a couple of moves before writing this message, but it's visible enough. I'll keep you updated with ideas and tests results, against me included. Congrats once again, well done!

It's nice to be able to whip out ChessGenius or Abaia (just downloaded today and it looks phenomenal) and play a game of blitz against it (Sorry... Haven't tried Caissa or DeepGreen).  However, as a serious tournament player I'd like to be able to use an iPhone chess app as a reference tool more than a sparring partner. 

I know that many of the programs available can handle PGN files with a single game in them, but does anybody know if any of the programmers intend to implement RAV support, allowing for variations and commentary?  I'd love to have a program where I can just go through some of my annotated games from my personal database on the go instead of having to pull out my laptop to review games with variations. 

Ideally I think something like Chessbase4iPhone would be absolutely amazing, but I wonder if there's even a market for a database (instead of engine-based) program?  Any thoughts?

I do plan to add support for variations and comments in some later version (as do all the other iPhone chess programmers, I am sure), but I don't know how soon. Reading and writing PGN games with variations and comments is easy, the challenge is the user interface.  At the very minimum, the user must be able to do the following operations:

1. Add a new variation from the current position.
2. Change the order of the variations from the current position, including replacing the main line with one of the sidelines.
3. Deleting a variation from the current position.
4. Navigate easily in a game containing variations.
5. Add, delete, edit and view comments for the current position.

All ideas about how to design a good iPhone user interface for this are welcome. 

@ChessMasterFire: Thank you very much for your comments!!! :)

@Tord: You know I have some ideas about the gui for variations ;).

thank you very much for your work (your post card is in process) :)

@Ousland: You are welcome! It's for people like you that I'm writing these comments. And, of course, my passion for the game and the technological progress plays it's role. If you are interested, I've posted another large review about Glaurung in the US App Store, under the nickname Mike-Alex. Thank you!

@ Tord, I have some ideas too that I'd like to share to, if you'd be interested!

@ Ousland I'd love to hear how you'd implement the gui for variations! 

I'd like to mess around some with the iPhone SDK and see if it would be possible to program a functional notation app similar to the MonRoi.  I know that the USCF probably wouldn't approve it, but it would be an interesting challenge nonetheless... plus it seems like a waste of money to spend $350 on a device that is solely dedicated to taking notation when the iPhone can do so much more!

Yes, I know, and I haven't forgotten.  :)

Nevertheless, new ideas are always welcome, so I thought it would be a good idea ato ask for suggestions here.

For those of you who use Glaurung and are happy with it: If Glaurung 1.0 is good, Ousland deserves a lot of credit for it. He contributed a lot of interesting ideas and constructive criticism during the beta testing period, and without his help, the user interface wouldn't have been anywhere near as good.

Of course I am interested, both in ideas for handling variations and comments and about anything else. I can't promise that I'll implement everything you and others suggest, but all ideas will at least get considered.

It's probably best to contact me by e-mail: You'll find my e-mail address in the "About" screen in Glaurung.

@Tord,

I'll be happy to send you an email (and a postcard!), but I just wanted to say again what a great app you've got there. 

My only two suggestions would be to add a way to pull in PGN from the Internet, similar to what Genius does (I really have come to appreciate having my opening repetoire on the device, for instance - or reviewing your favorite selection of GM games on a plane, etc.), and to 'wash' the board colours a little bit.  Currently I find the square colours are a bit too saturated and the black pieces tend to blend into the dark squares a little too much.

@everyone

Am I the only one who *didn't* know that you can be, say, playing chess on your iPhone/Touch and then, by double-'clicking' the button, you get a little Music-related widget/pop-up - without having to close the app? 

Man, the things you learn when you let your three-year-old play with your iPod...

@Tord

Thanks for the brilliant Glaurung app! I have been using it daily now and find it a tremendous help with analysing my games (although my battery life get a real work out!). 

I must admit that it does occasionally crash on my iPod, but it does not bother much considering what I'm getting for free from you.

Only suggestion: Personally I would like to see an option of having small annotation one the board so that the board size doesn't need to change.

Thanks again Tord!

Brian

@DeepGreene:

Loading PGNs from the Internet is a planned feature. The only reason it isn't included in the 1.0 version is that Glaurung currently doesn't always handle incorrect PGN files gracefully, and may crash when it encounters them. Unfortunately, many of the "PGNs" you find on the Internet have various errors in them. Once I have made the PGN reading more robust, reading PGNs from the Internet will be implemented.

I am completely illiterate with regard to computer graphics and colors: Does "too saturated" in this context simply mean "too dark"?  I can easily make the dark squares a little lighter, of course, if you think that makes the board clearer. Is this a problem only in the default brown (or blue, if you are using Abaia) color scheme, or in all of them?

@Ousland:

A forum would perhaps be useful, but I lack the time and technical expertise to set one up. Perhaps I should look into it, I'm beginning to feel like I'm abusing this message board.

@Severn:

The occasional crashes bother me more than anyone else, even if it's just a 1.0 version. I hope to solve all such problems in the future. If you notice some reproducible crashes, I would very much like to hear about them.  On my iPhone, Glaurung 1.0 never seems to crash once it is running, but if the phone has been running for a while and is short of memory, the program can sometimes freeze at startup and cause the phone to reboot.

I found this web site, which makes it possible to read reviews from all App Stores all over the world:

http://www.moopf.com/appstorereviews/appstore.php?appid=305558605&urlappid=&submit=Get+Reviews

It is clear that some people have very serious problems making the program work.  I find it very frustrating to read about all such problems and not have any way to contact the reviewers and try to find out more about their problems.  At least I can now feel very relieved that I chose to make my program free; I would feel completely devastated by all the 1-star reviews if I charged for my program.

What do you mean by "annotations on the board"?  Board coordinates (a1, b1, etc.) on each square?  I think most players wouldn't like that, but perhaps I can consider adding it as an option, disabled by default.

This would help if I had an iphone. 

Does any of the iPhone chess apps offer a true blindfold mode, i.e. moves entered and displayed in algebraic notation, without a board?

Thanks.

-ashish

Best I've seen is ChessQuest from Crazy Zebra.  It's 120 (free) or 1200 ($4.99) really quality tactics puzzles.  It lets you explore all the alternative lines, and you can decide whether or not to let the app display "Objectives" (e.g. "White to move and draw").  That's as thematic as it gets anyway; the puzzles do not tell you what kind of tactics you should be looking for.

EDIT:  It seems like the free version might be history.

I've never seen anything like that (so far).

On a somewhat related note, however, there is this (iPhone friendly) webapp I think is quite interesting:  http://38i.biz/blindchess/

Hi Tord,

Thanks for your reply. As the developer I'm sure you want it to run perfectly, but I can't help much about the crashes as it seem fairly random and does not seem reproducible; although it does seem to crash sometimes if I close the Glaurung app whilst its analysing a position and then try to open it again later (anywhere from a few minutes to hours later). But then if I just reopen it again it works fine. Hope that helps a little.

I had a look at that link and average for all the reviews is 4.30 stars! I think that's brilliant despite a few low ratings! Overall I'd say it's been very well received and once those small bugs have been ironed out it should only get better.

I meant board coordinates in the same way as on the Chess Quest board (there's a screen shot in the app store). Basically numbers 1-8 on the A file and a-h on the 1 rank (Oppose to coordinates on every square). Hope that makes sense and I would have it as an option for those who don't want it.

Thanks again for a great app!

Brian

The engine is amazing indeed glaurung is kinda powerful however I dislike the fact that it has so many bugs, when i'm in analysis mode, I often use the hint option and eventually it gets bugged...It shows a white hint right after white moves when it should give a black move instead or vice-versa, what I mean is it shows hint for the wrong player and that pretty much ruins it :(

For a first version it's pretty amazing though, the position setup is improved compared to chess genius in which there is no turn option. I really hope you can fix the hint bugs though.

Last thing, I think you people should be able to take back a computer move and replace it with some other move even if you're not during analysis, because that way you can see automatically what move the engine thinks is best and you can then try your own. In analysis you have to use the hint button for both sides and then move for both black and white and so on...kinda like with fritz where the engine plays automatically the best move and then you can take it back and overwrite it.