Checkers Apps for the iPhone
by Ed Gilbert
I was looking for a checkers app for my iPhone 4S when Bob mentioned that he was planning a Checker Maven review of apps for Android phones, and asked if I could add some info on the iPhone apps I tried. I installed about a dozen apps, played a number of games, and made some notes about each app. As a checkers player of average ability, I was looking for something that I could use for practice games. I wanted an opponent that was at least as strong a player as me (not asking a whole lot!), and preferably stronger. I was also hoping to find an app with features such as arbitrary position setup, and an analysis mode with infinite search time and search results with numeric search scores.
Some of the apps have other features such as pairing you up with another human opponent online, or keeping track of your game results history. I was not interested in these features and did not evaluate them.
Some of the apps have a free version and a pay version with more features. In most cases I first installed the free version and evaluated it, then installed the pay version and looked for improvements in play. In a few cases I did not try the pay version because the description indicated that the differences did not affect playing strength or ease of use and were not important to me.
I did not find any checkers apps that had all the features I was looking for. None of these have any kind of analysis mode, position setup, or give any indication of their evaluation of the game. I found one that for my purposes is clearly the best of the lot, although it is far from ideal. A few others could also play a decent game, at least in the opening. A strange feature of many is a choice of turning forced captures on or off, and some default to it off. Forced captures are not optional in checkers, and if you're not playing this way you're not playing checkers! Even the app that I picked as the best of the lot does not handle all captures smoothly. When making a capture move jumping 2 or more pieces, after jumping the first captured piece a pop-up box ask if you want to continue jumping, and gives you the choice to answer yes or no. Of course you can play legal checkers by selecting yes, but at the very least this is tedious and unnecessary.
Most of the apps played poorly and were not strong enough to give me a competitive game. Only 3 of the apps played well enough to give me a good game. These are Checkers Free from Optime Software, Fantastic Checkers (free) from Ensenasoft, and Teeny Checkers ($0.99) from Geoffrey Rainville. IMO the best of these is Teeny Checkers ($0.99), although it is far from ideal.
I played a few games between the 3 strongest apps, with the results shown below. These apps do not allow play to start from an arbitrary position setup, and there is usually no variety in the moves they play. Each time they are presented with a particular position they (usually) play the same move. I could typically only play 2 unique games between each set of opponents. In the games between Teeny and Fantastic, one of the apps varied in one of its early moves and this allowed a third game.
Checkers Free vs. Fantastic: +1, -0, =1.
Teeny Checkers ($0.99) vs. Fantastic: +2, -0, =1.
Teeny Checkers ($0.99) vs. Checkers Free: +2, -0, =0.
Checkers Free!
Developer: Ignazio Motisi (http://www.outofthebit.com)
- Plays 4 variants: English, Italian, Spanish, and 8x8 International. The program help describes the rules for each version. But these rules are incomplete, and the app does not enforce several rules relating to captures. For example, in Italian checkers, it implements the rule that men cannot capture kings, but not these rules: 1) If there are several capture moves available, the maximum number of pieces must be captured. 2) If there are several moves that meet rule 1) then if possible the captures must be done using a king. 3) If there are several moves that meet rules 1) and 2), then the maximum number of kings must be captured, and 4) If there are several moves that meet rules 1), 2), and 3) then a king must be captured as early as possible.
- 2 levels: easy and medium
- No undo.
Decent graphics, but program plays a weak game. I played several games of English checkers and won every game. I switched to 8x8 International, a variant that I have never played, and won that game as well.
In English checkers it enforces the capture rule.
Moves are easy to make. You can use drag and drop, or touch source and destination squares.
The user interface tries to show which pieces have legal moves by bouncing them up and down about once a second. This is quite annoying when you're trying to think about your move.In the screen capture you can see that all the light colored pieces that have legal moves are not centered in their squares, as I caught them in the process of bouncing.
Checkers! ($1.99)
Developer: Ignazio Motisi (http://www.outofthebit.com)
This version adds a third "hard" level. I beat it twice in 2 games (English checkers) at this level. In a 4 kings vs. 3 kings endgame, it put up almost no resistance, allowing me to force trades when it could have easily postponed them.
Checkers Free
Company: Optime Software (http://www.optimesoftware.com/)
- moves are made by touching the source and destination squares.
- Playing strength is good, it beat me in 3 of 4 games on the strongest setting. The playing strength is controlled by a slider that seems to have about 7 different settings. I beat it both games on its middle strength setting.
- Against Fantastic Checkers, it gained a winning advantage in the first game but could not complete the win. The second game was a draw.
- has an undo move command.
- There is a $0.99 version that has additional turn-based multiplayer features against Game Center friends or random network opponents. I did not try it because the description did not mention any changes to playing strength, or additional analysis features.
3D Checkers (free)
Company: Koduco (http://koduco.com)
- Uses only landscape mode.
- 3 levels
- Can undo one move by each side.
- Drag pieces to move, very easy to make moves. The easiest program to make moves with.
- Program strength is poor, it lost every game against me at its strongest level. It let me walk right in for a king with no resistance.
Checkers FlipSide5 (free)
- At the start of each game, you have to stare at ads for about 10 seconds, then tap an 'X' to get to play.
- Moves are easy to make, by dragging the pieces.
- Appears to have a bug. It exited unexpectedly, sending me back to the desktop in about half of the games that I played.
- There is a slider to control the playing strength, but it appears to be disabled in the free version, which is fixed at "intermediate". I beat it every game that I was able to finish without it crashing.
Checkers FlipSide5 ($1.99)
This version eliminates the annoying ads of the free version, and the strength control is enabled. I beat it easily on 2 games at its strongest setting.
Fantastic Checkers (free)
Author: Ensenasoft (http://www.ensenasoft.com)
- Make moves either by dragging or touching the from and to squares. It seemed fussy and did not recognize many of my touches. I often had to try 2 or 3 times to make a move before I was successful. There is about a 1/2 second delay between touching the destination square and the user interface responding by making the move. That delay, combined with the difficulty in getting it to recognize touches, made it difficult to play.
- Several times it started playing in Autoplay mode, automatically playing both sides of the board, when I had put it in 1-player mode. I had to kill it to recover.
- It has a bug in its move generator. It made a capture move that crowned one of its men to king, and then continued capturing with the king as part of the same move. This is illegal in English checkers!
- No undo.
- 3 playing levels. Playing strength is good. It beat me all but one game when played at its highest level.
Fantastic Checkers ($0.99)
Author: Ensenasoft (http://www.ensenasoft.com)
- This version adds the ability to use OpenFeint to store game data on a server. I didn't try that feature. It also adds the options to play music during the game, and a second user interface theme where the checkers pieces look like cookies.
- Its playing strength and move making interface is the same as in the free version.
Teeny Checkers Free
Author: Geoffrey Rainville (www.teenysoftware.net)
- Make a move by dragging the piece. The ease of moving is good, but a little fussier than 3D Checkers or Checkers FS5.
- Teeny Checkers lets you make illegal moves when you have a capture move!
- There are no options, strength levels, or commands to take back a move.
- The program twice hung up on me at the welcome screen, requiring a power off to recover.
- If you tell the app to play first, it plays with its pieces along the bottom of the screen, and your pieces at the top. This is backwards from the orientation that I am accustomed to.
- To make a double jump, you jump the first piece, and then a popup message asks if you want to jump again. This is unnecessary and tedious.
- I beat it in 3 games. It does not play a very strong game.
Teeny Checkers ($0.99)
Author: Geoffrey Rainville (www.teenysoftware.net)
This version adds a strength control, a selection of board themes, and the ability to have several games going simultaneously. At its strongest strength, it searches for between 1 and 4 seconds before it moves. It beat me in every game I played.
- Unlike the free version, this requires you to make forced moves. However it has the same bug in its move generator that was seen in Fantastic Checkers. It made a capture move that crowned one of its men to king, and then continued capturing with the king as part of the same move.
- I did not experience any welcome screen hangups as I did with the free version.
- If you tell the app to play first, it plays with its pieces along the bottom of the screen, and your pieces at the top. This is backwards from the orientation that I am accustomed to.
- To make a double jump, you jump the first piece, and then a popup message asks if you want to jump again. This is unnecessary and tedious.
- In the first game against Fantastic checkers it reached a 4 pieces to 3 advantage, but it could not win the (easily won) ending. The game reached a point where both sides moved a king back and forth between 2 squares. Teeny checkers won the second and third games.
Frog Checkers ($0.99)
http://www.codecriticalsoftware.com/frogcheckersiphone/index.htm
- The pieces are represented by frogs that randomly blink their eyes and make 'ribbit' sounds. Surprisingly, this is not too distracting.
- Make moves either by dragging or touching the from and to squares. Moves are relatively easy to make.
- Frog Checkers lets you make illegal moves when you have a capture move!
- 5 playing levels. I won 2 games and lost 3 on its highest level.
Checkers Plus (free)
http://sunstormgames.com/game-detail/?game_id=832
- Make moves by touching the source and destination squares.
- 3 playing levels. I won all games on its highest level. Its play is very weak.
- Unfortunately it allows illegal moves when there is a capture move.
Checkers - Classic (Free)
Author: Beetle Game Works
- Make moves by touching the source and destination squares.
- Has no control of play level.
- I beat it 3 times in 4 games. Its endgame play is weak. After it gets one king, it sometimes moves that king back and forth between between 2 squares when it has other moves to crown men, or can move its king to a more central and useful position.
Playing Strength: Class F
Excalibur LCD Chess & Checkers
A Guest Review by Wes Loewer
A few weeks ago, I was in Circuit City and saw a hand held checker game called "LCD Chess & Checkers" by Excalibur Electronics for $11.99 (normally $14.99, lists for $24.95). I was a bit skeptical having been burned once before by the absolutely terrible Pocket Checkers from Radica which is now in the hands of my 5 year old after my 10 year old said he was bored with it because he could beat it every time (see Jim Loy's review).
I'd seen an Excalibur chess & checker game called KingMaster III at Toys-R-Us some years ago, so in hopes that this would not be a "first attempt" by the company, I bought the hand held game. I've toyed around with it a little and here's my review of the checkers side of the "Chess & Checkers" game.
First of all, the board on the screen is noticeably larger (1 5/8 inch) than Pocket Checkers (1 1/8 inch), but the white pieces are a bit hard to see. Pieces are actually chess pawns, which isn't so bad, it's just that the lines that they are drawn with are so thin it makes the the white pieces hard to see. There's a contrast control which helps.
Unlike Pocket Checkers, it plays by the real rules. (Pocket Checkers allows a man to jump to king and continue jumping, and gives you the option to not require forced jumps.)
The Excalibur unit has quite a few nice features. It has a Setup Mode in which you can set up positions to play or let the computer solve. It has 16 difficulty levels: 1 ply, 2 ply, 2 sec, 3 sec, 4, 5, 7, 8, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60 sec, and infinite. All times are exact. It plays much better than Pocket Checkers, but if you're looking for master level playing machine, this is not it.
Usually by 60 seconds, it has finished searching 8 plies and is searching the 9th. (There's an option for showing the search info.) By comparison, the Simple Checkers engine usually searches about 12 plies in 1 second on my Pentium 2.4 GHz. It, no doubt, has a very slow, low power processor in it -- but what can you expect for something that runs on 3 AAA batteries. (Well, now that I think about it, my HP-49g+ calculator also takes 3 AAA batteries and its processor runs at 75MHz, software overclockable to 200 MHz, but I digress.)
There does not appear to be an endgame database as it has trouble finishing off wins. I set up a 3 Kings vs 2 Kings (B:WK27,K9:BK19,K15,K10.) and it could not find the win on level 15 (60 sec). What I have found is that at the higher levels, its play is not terrible (ie: it sometimes beats me, a very rank amateur) until the endgame at which point it seems to flounder. If I'm down 3 to 2, I just call it a loss and start a new game.
One annoying thing is that even though there are 3 different sound settings, none of them turn the sound completely off. At the minimum sound settings, it still beeps quite loudly if you accidentally press an invalid key, which is easily done. I bought it with the idea of playing with it on a long flight from the States to Nairobi that I was about to take, but I didn't use it on the plane as I thought the noise might disturb fellow passengers.
The button interface is a bit awkward. Radica's Pocket Checkers has a simpler, easier to use button interface in which you use one set of arrow keys to select a piece and another set to indicate the move direction. This one, however, uses the same set of keys for both. You use the arrows to select a piece, press a button, then use the same arrows to indicate the direction of the move. It might make more sense for chess, but not so much for checkers.
You can undo the last two plies. (In chess mode, you can undo back to the beginning of the game. I can't imagine why they would have limited this feature in the checkers mode.)
There is sort of a bug (feature?) in the software. Sometimes, it doesn't allow you to select a particular piece to move using just the arrow keys like normal. When this happens, there's an alternate button for selecting pieces which gets around the problem.
I'd say it's not a great checker playing machine, but it's not so horrible either. To be fair, it's really a chess machine which also plays checkers. (It has a lot more options for chess.) That's probably the only way they could realistically market a checkers playing machine. It's a great toy for someone like myself, but I'm not sure that checker experts would enjoy it. You might consider giving it as a gift, especially for a gameboy influenced youngster who believes a game in the hand is worth two on the table.
If you want to take a look at it, use this link.
In keeping with the practice of comparing programs with Simple Checkers that comes with Checkerboard, I played a game with LCD Chess & Checkers (at the 60 seconds setting) against Simple Checkers (set at 1 second on a 2.4GHz Pentium 4). The result was that Simple Checkers clearly had a win but was not able to finish it off.
Playing Strength: D
Feature Set: B
Interface: B
Opening Book: 1 ply (really)
Endgame Database: None
Overall: Fun for the novice
SMARTPHONE CHECKERS
This is a new review category (as of January 2012). Here are some reviews of iPhone checker apps by esteemed checker programmer Ed Gilbert. Android app reviews will follow at a later date.
4. Recommendations
If you want a program that plays a world class game, is full of useful features, and is inexpensive (free, in fact) use the Cake Manchester or KingsRow engine with CheckerBoard. The display is not exactly fancy but that shouldn't be the deciding factor. You will have both the worthiest of opponents, a fine analysis engine, and an unmatched set of features.
If you want a program that plays an excellent game, has numerous useful features, and (at least apparently) reflects published play in the openings, choose Sage. The cost is very moderate ($19), the display is nice (even though you can't get the colors quite right), and the play is top flight even if short of the very strongest programs.... and you do have the option of dropping in stronger engines and the large endgame databases.
In the low-cost category, Nexus is an alternative to Sage, for just a few dollars more. There are tradeoffs between the two, making a clear choice difficult, but Sage is still developed and supported while Nexus is not.
I am told that if you want to go all the way to the top and cost is no object, Nemesis is the choice. I cannot verify this, as I did not review Nemesis here because I don't as yet have it. In addition to being at the top of the quality list, at $119 it is at the top of the price list as well. That said, I am planning a purchase when the next release is out; I will report further here.
If you are a Linux user, don't overlook Simple Checkers with the XCheckers interface. It will give you a satisfactory game every time, even if quite shy of master level. And now, with Cake++ available, you can get an excellent game on the Linux platform.
But if you want something free that has merit for young kids, dive down into Class F and take a look at Magic Wand Checkers. You can start the kids off at the very easy level and ratchet up as they improve their game. They will always be charmed, but never totally frustrated. Some day, of course, they'll be ready for better competition.
Or, if you are even less interested in playing strength, but want something with a more flashy look, you could always spend a whole $1 on Classic Checkers. I am not an authority on what motivates small children but the important thing is to get them playing checkers!
If you want a Palm program, consider CheckersKing, an uninspired Palm port of Simple Checkers. It plays a fair game, and no more than that. There is nothing else currently available truly worth your time or money, and at least this one is only $5. You could also look at Checkers Plus; it can't play checkers worth a hoot, but it does have a lot of variety.
5. Afterword
There are really three types of checker-playing programs out there: the really serious, the pretentious, and the trivial. The really serious programs, perhaps ten or so in number, cater to serious checker players. That is an unfortunately small audience in today's world, yet the serious programs represent a lot of time and effort and a very high level of achievement. This achievement has reached a level such that Martin Fierz, one of the world's preeminent checker program developers, feels that checker programming is now a matter of having the best opening and endgame databases; the tactical engines are at an incredibly high level with little to choose among the very best of them.
But then there are the programs that claim to be serious about checkers, but the authors didn't put in the effort to produce a product with anything like top-flight playing strength. This is common in the world of shareware, where sometimes egos overcome judgment, and outlandish claims get made by programmers who, overly proud of their products, thinks they are the greatest things ever. They could have at least surveyed the market. Just look above and you see that nearly all of these programs can't defeat--- or even get thrashed by--- Simple Checkers.
A friendly word of advice to would-be checker program authors: study Simple Checkers and use its methods, if need be. If you cannot turn out a program that plays at least as well as Simple Checkers, you are wasting everyone's time, especially your own.
The third category, the trivial, ought to annoy and offend every serious checker player, at whatever level of skill. These are the products that, in their trivial implementations, in turn trivialize the Grand Old Game, and perpetuate the public concept that checkers is 'easy' and just 'a kid's game.' Some of these products, to be sure, have flashy graphics, music, outlandish themes, and all sorts of trappings intended to 'dress up' a game that in fact stands on its own quite nicely, thank you. I don't need a game with roaring dragons to get my interest --- the authors of which don't even know how the board is supposed to be oriented. Those of us who hope that someday there might be a revival of checkers as a widespread, seriously played game, can only shake their heads, realizing that such trivial and trivializing products hurt the cause a great deal.
What is needed, although this is wishful thinking to be sure, is a product that is as serious-minded as Nemesis, with serious features as in CheckerBoard, with a fine presentation such as Wincheck, and with the widespread distribution of a product such as the Chessmaster series. Now that would move us in the right direction!
Yes, I know, I'm dreaming. But please allow me.
Please send comments, suggestions, corrections, and protests to bobnewell@bobnewell.net.
Bob Newell, Santa Fe, New Mexico; last modified 06/06/12.
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