ipad and chess?

Laurie Roberts · Post by **Laurie Roberts** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 7:42 am

My netbook has finally packed up. The delicate hard drive didn't like it when I chucked the netbook in my bag and carted it around in rucksacks to places like the London Chess Classic, train etc and has finally given up. I am thinking of getting an ipad to replace it on the basis that it has a solid state drive and is more geared to being carted around.

I used my netbook for surfing the net and access sites like chess tempo, redhotpawn, following games with analysis on ICC and looking at openings in my database (on SCID).

There are lots of chess apps out for the ipad but has anyone got experience of whether they are any good? I know ipads are less powerful than netbooks and just wondered if anyone had experience of them?

Carl Hibbard · Post by **Carl Hibbard** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 8:06 am

Laurie Roberts wrote:There are lots of chess apps out for the ipad but has anyone got experience of whether they are any good? I know ipads are less powerful than netbooks and just wondered if anyone had experience of them?

Shredder which is on the store and pretty good to be honest so I would recommend it but more for the casual game whilst sitting on the sofa watching the telly

Nick Murphy · Post by **Nick Murphy** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 9:24 am

Hiarcs for iPad is excellent, and the best out there at the moment IMO>

however, iPad chess is still a long way from laptop chess - so if chess will be the main use, then I would advise a different device.

Adam Raoof · Post by **Adam Raoof** » Sat Dec 31, 2011 2:47 pm

Thanks to Paolo Casaschi we now have live and flash-free coverage of chess events for Ipad, iphone and ipod touch!

http://www.hastingschess.com/?page_id=444

http://pgn4web.casaschi.net/home.html

Carl Hibbard · Post by **Carl Hibbard** » Sat Dec 31, 2011 3:10 pm

You mean Flash free of course?

Adam Raoof · Post by **Adam Raoof** » Sat Dec 31, 2011 4:04 pm

edited!

Paolo Casaschi · Post by **Paolo Casaschi** » Sat Dec 31, 2011 4:11 pm

Carl Hibbard wrote:You mean Flash free of course?

It's "plugin-free" in general, without the need of flash (required by the DGT TOMA viewer), silverlight (required by the silverboard viewer used by TWIC) or java (required by some older live viewer). As such, it runs both on the browser of Windows/MacOS/Linux computers and on most mobile devices: iPad, iPhone, iPod touch but also Android based tablets/phones and Blackberry devices.

Thanks for the credits, unlike others taking the same code, labelling it "powered by xxx" and even making a press announcement about it

Carl Hibbard · Post by **Carl Hibbard** » Sat Dec 31, 2011 7:09 pm

Hosting has reached its peak at a little over 1Mbps

Carl Hibbard · Post by **Carl Hibbard** » Sun Jan 01, 2012 2:23 pm

Howell late again I see?

John Foley · Post by **John Foley** » Sun Jan 01, 2012 2:33 pm

I use iPad for chess. It does the most useful things.

PGN Viewer Gold is useful for recording one's own games and downloading and reviewing pgn files to see the games of others

Hiarcs is good for analysing games afterwards. Hiarcs is not so good for deciding on an adjourned position because the iPad version doesn't have an endgame module.

A new version of Stockfish has just been released, so there is plenty of analysis power on the iPad.

Other applications which work well are ICC and InstantChess. There are also a lot of instructive materials eg eChessBooks, Learn Chess ebooks and ChessU.

One thing to note about the iPad is that it is like a satellite device - it is designed to plug into a mothership computer with iTunes from time to time to transfer files and back up.

So an iMac and iPad are an ideal combination. I don't see much point in a laptop anymore.

Paul Cooksey · Post by **Paul Cooksey** » Sun Jan 01, 2012 7:04 pm

John Foley wrote:I use iPad for chess. It does the most useful things.

I guess these things are subjective, I haven't found my ipad particularly useful for chess.

There are some good engines, and it is a very nice portable set and book reader. But Chessbase is the killer app for me, so I still prefer a PC.

Laurie Roberts · Post by **Laurie Roberts** » Sun Jan 01, 2012 7:58 pm

I'm enjoying the ipad. Only problem is I can't get the pgn viewers (Hiarcs etc) to show the variations in a pgn. It doesn't seem to recognise the variations or offer options

Mark Hannon · Post by **Mark Hannon** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 8:54 pm

Tactics trainer and ChessU are 2 good programmes. Hiarcs plays well. The Everyman chess reader can cope with some pgn files and the books from Everyman to play through that are available are good. There is also a new book reader which leeds you play through the games as you read the book, you can get Street fighting chess on that by a Scottish player of about 2100 to 2200 Burnett I think on that plat form also a free sample chess fundamentals by Capablanca.

Would like to see a programme that can read chessbase files.

Steve Rooney · Post by **Steve Rooney** » Mon Jan 07, 2013 5:49 pm

Any further feedback/updates on apps for iPad?

I have experimented with a few but not found the killer app yet. Feedback on Hiarcs, Shredder etc would be interesting. (As long as Chessbase/Fritz deny the existence of Macs I tend to ignore them.)

Roger de Coverly · Post by **Roger de Coverly** » Mon Jan 07, 2013 7:21 pm

Steve Rooney wrote:Any further feedback/updates on apps for iPad?

A fellow club member uses the ebook reader as mentioned. This can also function as a pgn reader. He had to find a hack to get plain pgn files onto the ipad as apparently the straightforward file transfer from PC available on Android devices isn't supported for Apples.

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