Deep Green Chess: schaken met stijl op je iPhone
At the moment the series ‘ The Queen’s Gambit ‘ is very high in the top lists of Netflix. This book adaptation of a 1980s novel revolves around Elisabeth “Beth” Harmon, an orphan with a special talent for chess. She wins tournaments at an early age and eventually competes against the masters of chess. And an addiction to alcohol and drugs is also involved. Anyway, the series is highly recommended (maybe watch it remotely with your friends), and we got just as enthusiastic about chess as we were with the movie ‘ Long live the queen ‘. And that’s why we started looking for the best app to play chess on the iPhone. And that is Deep Green Chess.
Chess on the iPhone
Deep Green Chess is really an oldie from the App Store. The first release was on December 9, 2008, just months after the opening of the App Store. In fact, the app is even older, as it is the successor to a chess program for Apple’s Newton (the grandfather of the iPhone and iPad). In all those years on the iPhone, Deep Green has had a total of eleven updates. Almost unimaginable at a time when Instagram and Spotify come with updates almost every week. The similarities with the ancient predecessor are quickly identified. On the one hand it is the chess engine Deep Green from which the app has its name, on the other hand it is the incredible eye for detail with which the app is designed.
Get started
If you start the app for the first time, you will already be greeted by a stylish chessboard and you can immediately start as white. For enthusiasts, you can also use the button at the top left to design your own arrangements of figures in order, for example, to play a well-known chess pot or to solve various chess dilemmas. With the buttons at the bottom you start a new game, undo a move, view the previous move or get a move suggestion from the computer. With the button at the top right you can view the entire history of all moves. Finally, there are the settings in which you adjust the level of the computer and choose your color. There are no more options and, to be honest, we don’t need more options in a chess app.
The level of the computer
What is important again is how well the chess engine plays. With the standard difficulty setting, we have not yet managed to beat the computer. Only when we lower the level are we able to surprise Deep Green with moves he didn’t already see coming. At the highest level, the computer makes mincemeat of our king so quickly that we don’t even realize what strategy he actually had. We assume that is a good signal.
Lack of updates
Deep Green is our favorite app for playing chess on the iPhone, which thanks to the series Queen’s Gambit has again conquered a place on our home screen. But Deep Green does have a big drawback, and we have even mentioned that before. The last update of Deep Green is four years ago. You can use the app even all iPhone games, but expected so no optimization for example borderless screen that since the iPhone X have. But apparently this is being worked on, because the developer says on Twitter that he is working on a new version. We are looking forward to. Perhaps the high price of 8.99 euros will therefore temporarily go down.