Chess Genius on Android

[Chess Genius on Android]Chess Genius for Android

Strong and crafty chess
engine at a very low price.
Unmissable.

Rating by Mike D: 5.0 stars
*****

Chess Genius landed on the Android App store earlier this year. Developed by Richard Lang who has an extraordinary track record for chess engine development across multiple platforms over the past 30 years. Lang’s expertise in building strong chess engines running on very constrained hardware is possibly ideal for mobile devices and platforms. Lang is no stranger to mobile devices, Chess Genius actually ran fairly decently on the Palm Pilot and impressed on the Dell IPAQ / Pocket PC.

Richard Lang’s chess engine achievements

Chess Genius has a pedigree second to none. It first announced it’s international arrival by beating reigning World Champion Garry Kasparov in a rapid chess match back in 1994 (It was the first round of Intel Rapid Chess Grand Prix event held in London). Back then it was running on a Pentium Processor. After a couple of years of fame Chess Genius gave way to the likes of Fritz and Junior.

Chess Genius has a remarkable pedigree; it’s programmer is Richard Lang who has been involved in chess-engine development since the ZX Spectrum days, starting with the 1981 European Chess Champion Cyrus IS Chess, and the much respected Psion Chess for the Sinclair QL. Processor wise, Lang developed chess engines for a range of processors: Zilog Z80, Motorola 68000 and the Intel 8060.

Using the 68000 Lang developed a series of exceptionally strong engines for the Mephisto range of chess computers for Hegener & Glassner, including sought-after models like Mephisto Portorose, Mephisto Vancouver and Mephisto Berlin. Though Lang didn’t forget his Intel roots and as the Intel progressed from the 8080, through the 286/386/486 years to the Pentium era, he produced Chess Genius which firmly established worldwide recognition.

Chess Genius on Android

So how has it made the transition to Android? Impressively well, actually. Unlike Shredder, Chess Genius plays at full strength. The only alterable facets are the thinking time, with per move and per game timings available.

[Chess Genius on Android screenshot]

The board quality also isn’t as good as Shredder on the same device, but the board is good enough and sufficient colour schemes to find something that’s usable.

I’m using a Nexus S phone, so the touch interface is a little ropey and inaccurate. But I feel that’s a general problem with the phone rather than an issue with Chess Genius itself. But it is a little frustrating when the wrong piece is moved, or the right piece to the wrong square. Thankfully Chess Genius allows you unlimited undos, even while it’s thinking about it’s reply.

The chess engine itself is exceptional. Certainly nowhere near the current top of desktop and multi-core personal computers. But, it offers a serious challenge on the low-powered ARM Cortex A8 processor of the Nexus S. There is a sense of accomplishment beating this little devil. Chess Genius plays a remarkable game, especially in it’s tendancy to counter-attack right at the point you think you’ve got a serious advantage, typically a sacrifice that demolishes your carefully arranged attack. Chess Genius is a joy to play.

Though, I feel the a smart-phone doesn’t show off the potential of Chess Genius. I’m considering getting an Android tablet, because like Shredder on the iPad, I think this could be a winning combination. When I first got my iPad I keep rechecking the iPad app store to see if Chess Genius was available. It’s available as an iPhone app, but I would really like to see a proper “HD” iPad version at some stage. I hope running Chess Genius on an Android tablet will also take advantage of it’s screen size.

Database-wise, Chess Genius is equipped with load and save options of PGN files that are on the device. Loading a PGN file allows you to pick a game from the list, see the raw PGN and playing through the moves to that game (although starting from the final position). Switch to analysis mode and you get real-time analysis of the current position. No adding of annotations, though.

I was extremely pleased to see Chess Genius available on the Android App Store, especially at a price of £3.00 – that’s incredible value. There’s a Chess Genius Lite available for free, which has serious limitations, but it’s good enough as a hardware check. The low price of the full version was such that I didn’t consider the Lite version for a second.

Despite initial excitement, I’ve not been disappointed. Although the Android version of Shredder looks better and feels better, I find that I’m preferring Chess Genius for it’s raw chess engine strength and it’s enterprising attacking style.

If you are a regular chess player or afficiando and you have an Android smartphone I heartily recommend installing this Richard Lang masterpiece.

4 thoughts on “Chess Genius on Android

  1. Hi,

    I am using HTC Wildfire (Android 2.2). I played against desktop computer running Chessmaster GM edition.

    ChessGenius had 10 seconds per move, not thinking on opponents time.
    Chessmaster had 2 minutes, Fischer style, 1sec increment (through the game its time never dropped below one minute) and it (apparently) had thinking on opponents time.

    The game was a draw!

    Also, a friend of mine has Genius on Nokia N95 (Symbian) and it BEAT the Chessmaster on desktop PC.

    Chessmaster’s desktop pc ingame rating was around 2900.

    So, I would say the ChessGenius on Wildfire and N95, with thinking time above few seconds, has a good GM strength.

  2. The tradition of ChessGenius continues I’ve had ChessGenius on numerous platforms and now on Android too. It’s a good chess partner and compared to Shredder I like that it displays the name of the opening.

  3. Chess Genius is just gold. It’s been with me through a number of devices and operating systems including Palm, Symbian S60, Windows Mobile 6.5, and when getting my first Android phone this was the first program I looked for. It’s still on my short list of the first things I install on a new device. The PGN support makes this little program incredibly full featured. I can not only play casual games on it, but I can use it for endgame training, and write down games into a database.

    Speaking of little: Even the most basic apps these days seem to consume at least 50 MB on your phone. This little gem takes about 1 MB!

    Support is also top notch. This program may be _old_, but it still receives care and love to keep it running flawlessly on whatever new devices comes out. And the support is very responsive if you send a request.

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