Shredder, the most successful chess program ever, is also available for the iPad. You can play against Shredder, analyze with him and solve chess puzzles. It offers the usual Shredder standard on your iPad. In addition to the outstanding playing strength of the 12 times computer chess world champion, Shredder is also able to mimic the play of a human chess player with any playing strength. He even deliberately makes typical human mistakes in those levels. Solve 1000 built in chess puzzles. Shredder keeps track of your performance and offers advice if needed. You can adjust Shredder’s playing strength from beginner to master level. If you like, Shredder automatically adjusts his strength to yours. He even calculates an Elo rating for you. This is how the playing strength of chess players is typically measured. During the game a coach is watching your moves and warns you if you are about to make a mistake. See how you are getting better and better the more games you play and the more chess puzzles you solve. * Adjustable playing strength * Intuitive and very easy to operate * 1000 built in chess puzzles * Watch your rating improve in a diagram * Outstanding playing strength on the iPad * Analyse your games with Shredder, find your mistakes and improve your play * Coach shows your mistakes * Different playing styles from passive to aggressive * Great variety: browsable opening book with more than one million moves * Access 1200 GB of endgame databases online * Enter and analyze any position you like * Load and save games (incl. names, date, etc.) * Send games via email * Different chess boards and pieces * VoiceOver / Accessibility support * Improve your play whenever and wherever you like
Needs File Sharing
The puzzles are good. The engine is reasonably strong. It needs file sharing so you can import pgn games.
❤️❤️
I’ve used this chess app for many years and it’s just great!!! No other app out there compares.
Very Good w/Caveats
I’ve played over 3,000 matches with Shredder. It’s flexible, powerful, and has most of the bells and whistles. The flexible game save function is helpful, and the leveling mechanic is reasonable. The biggest downsides are 1. The move suggestions, at least at my (middling) level are laughable. Follow them and you’ll win every time. But if you back up and try the same move on your own, without triggering it as a hint, you’ll be slaughtered. Meaning, when Shredder is teaching you, it sets up unrealistic responses that allow it to make successful hints. This is, in fact, the opposite of helpful. Even at my level, it was immediately obvious that the suggested moves were idiotic. 2. The puzzles are of little use, as they only test your knowledge. They do little to help you learn more. There is no explanation for why this or that is “...the best move for white”. And because it’s also timing you and scoring you, it feels judging, not supportive. When you fail, you just move on to the next puzzle, you don’t learn anything. It’s frustrating. Finally, the visuals are quite dated at this point, though that is obviously subjective and minor. All in all, it has a lot going for it, but really shows weaknesses as a teaching tool.
Put out to pasture??
I didn’t review comments before downloading. Had I done so, I would have noticed no reviews more recent than one year ago. There’s only one of those and the rest are two years or older - a clear sign of neglect. Program performance and consistency also indicate neglect - IMHO. My first foray has been with the puzzles - which are “interesting” but frequently obtuse - with no explanations as to WHY one has managed to solve a puzzle. (Perhaps my lack of a Grand Master’s knowledge of the game is the reason I don’t understand - - but I don’t think so.) When one decides to play a position from the end of a puzzle to explore why a puzzle may have been solved, the program is completely bonkers - sometimes reversing board positions - sometimes not; sometimes playing automatically - sometimes not; and SOMETIMES making the most garishly amateur automatic plays so that it seems like an intentional loss is intended. I’m going to just move on. No point in attempting to contact a “support” department that must be moribund.
SCAM ALERT!!!! SAVE YOUR MONEY!!!
Elo is only 2600 and plays like 1700. I have played several games against the engine and Shredder resigned every game but one. This app won’t teach you ANYTHING!! What rhymes with cam? (SCAM)👎👎
Good app; could use a few refinements
I really like this chess app. It's very strong, has a nice rating system, when you set it for lower levels, it degrades play in a more realistic fashion than many chess games. It's a great app. Having said that, there are still curious oddities. * For example, the “new game;setup position; enter moves; start analysis” menu is using the “export” icon. That makes no sense to me. The iOS app uses the “+” icon, which while not perfect, seems closer. I’m not sure why the iPad and iPhone apps use different icons. * I wish it had cut/paste and import/export features to get PGN/FEN representations in and out of the app. * I wish the game database could (optionally) be shared between devices. Perhaps put it in iCloud? * I wish the iPad game supported multitasking (both split-view and slide-over), allowing me to read a chess book and analyze a game at the same time. * I wish the app supported annotations, tappable move list, etc. At the very least, given all of this iPad screen real-estate, show us more than two moves in the list at a time! But I still love this app. I think it's the best chess app out there. But it’s not keeping up with device capabilities introduced over the last few years...
One of the best chess apps
Shredder’s user interface may have been overtaken by Christophe Theron’s Chess Pro based on the Chess Tiger engine. Despite its weaker engine, Chess Pro only narrowly wins overall as a better app due to better game analysis functionality that Shredder Chess also has. I would not recommend one over the other but rather getting both! Some of Shredder’s outstanding features are the simplicity and elegance of the user interface, ability to randomly alter the engine’s personality, automatic Elo rating adaptation based on game outcomes, ability to transmit games individually or as a collection of games in PGN format. Chess Tiger Pro currently cannot email as a collection of games but rather individually. Despite its age, Shredder remains one the best chess playing apps on iOS. It’s playing strength can automatically be adapted to the user’s playing strength if desired. There is an opening book. There is a basic position analysis function. There are puzzles. There is an indicator about which side is winning during the game. While not as good as a graph, it still makes it easy to detect blunders when there are abrupt shifts of the indicator. The biggest negative about Shredder is that it’s iPhone version is a separate purchase :-(
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