10 best chess games for Android

Chess is one of the oldest board games. You can play relaxing games with friends, or you can engage with a very active competitive chess community. What’s great about chess is that it’s easy to learn and difficult to master. You can learn new things about this game years after first starting out. People are still  If you’re here to find some chess, here are the best chess games for Android.

We’d also like to give an honorable mention to FollowChess (Google Play). It’s not a chess game, but it lets you watch chess games from most major tournaments. It’s a great way to learn more advanced chess strategies and interact more with the game.

Chess by AI Factory Limited

Price: Free / $0.99

Chess by AI Factory Limited is one of the most popular chess games on mobile. It has all of the basic stuff. It also includes 12 levels of difficulty, casual and pro play modes, achievements, leaderboards, and even cloud saving. The interface is simple. However, there are eight chessboard themes. The free version has no in-app purchases, but it does have ads. You can buy the $0.99 version to remove them. Chess by Chess.com is another good app in this genre that acts very similarly.

Chess Openings Trainer

Price: Free / $4.99

Chess Openings Trainer is a chess training app. It helps you learn how to do good chess opens and how to transition from openings into the mid-game. The tool watches your moves and then immediately moves in order to specifically target your weaknesses. You get better over time and so does the app. There are also flash cards with random openings to play from, PNG file support, and it uses the famous Stockfish chess engine. The pro version adds some extra features from the free version as well.

Chess Tactics Pro

Price: Free / Up to $8.99

Chess Tactics Pro is unlike most chess games. There isn’t much in the way of standard chess. However, it does have tons of chess puzzles. It features offline puzzle packs (available as in-app purchases), daily online puzzles, and more. It claims the difficulty of some challenges can get to ELO 2000+ and that’s about as far up as it goes. It’s a good way to challenge your skills and learn some new tactics. The game is free to download. You can purchase additional content through in-app purchases.

CT-ART

Price: Free / $7.99

CT-ART is among the best chess games for those who want to learn. It features 2,200 basic exercises, 1,800 auxiliary exercises, and 50 topics to learn. Each exercise has a different goal and is meant to teach you a different tactic. Additionally, the game will keep track of your ELO improvement as you progress through the app. It might be better classified as an instructional app rather than a game. However, learning all the little tactics does actually require you to play chess.

Lichess

Price: Free

Lichess is another one of the most popular chess games on mobile. Its main premise is playing chess online against other players. The game boasts a player base of over 150,000 players. That shouldn’t make it too hard to find a game with a person at around your skill level. It also has several game modes, tournaments, and you can see your game stats. You can also play offline against a computer if you so choose. The app also boasts of being available in 80 languages. Its biggest draw is the price. It’s free with no ads or in-app purchases. The app is also open source in case you want to see how it runs.

Mate in 1

Price: Free / $1.99

Mate in 1 is a chess puzzle game from the developers of CT-ART. It gives you 2,500 puzzles where you can score a checkmate in one move. Each one is double-checked for correctness, gives players hints if errors are made, and you can bookmark your favorites. It’s a fairly fun chess game to play to hone your skills. Plus, the sheer number of puzzles you get for $1.99 is definitely worth it. The game has some scoring bugs the further in you go, but it’s nothing terribly serious.

Play Magnus Chess

Price: Free to play

Play Magnus Chess is what the title says it is. It features a chess engine that is tuned to play a lot like chess Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen. The game features the ability to choose Magnus’ age and the engine tunes itself to play like he did at that age. This also serves as a difficulty selection since he did improve as he got older. According to the app description, some players may even qualify to play Magnus himself. That may just be marketing doing its thing though. Some claim the engine isn’t as tough as Magnus and that makes sense to us. It’s a decent chess game overall.

Really Bad Chess

Price: Free / Up to $2.99

Really Bad Chess is one of the newer chess games for Android. It looks like a fairly standard chess game. However, this one lets you play with completely random pieces. You could have five knights and three bishops or 3 queens and 2 pawns on the board for all the game cares. The free version lets you battle it out with the AI in a few different game modes. The premium version adds a versus mode, removes advertising, adds theming, and some other minor changes. This is a chess game for those who always wondered what it would be like if delicate balance and perfect strategy didn’t matter.

Shredder Chess

Price: $6.99

Shredder Chess is not the most popular chess game on the list. However, people seem to like it. The game has over 1,000 chess-related puzzles, adjustable playing strength, and even save and load states like video game console emulators. This game also has a desktop version. If you buy the desktop version, you actually get this version for free, but it doesn’t work and vice versa. It has the occasional bugs, but the AI is quite humanlike and it’s an enjoyable game.

Stockfish Engines OEX

Price: Free

Stockfish Engines OEX includes Stockfish engines 11 and 15. You can load these engines into a GUI such as Chess for All, Chess PNG Master, and a few others. You can find the list in the Google Play description for this app. People really enjoy the Stockfish Engines because they are among the highest quality of any engine. This app doesn’t actually let you play chess. It just provides the chess engine for you to load in a different app. Still, having Stockfish 15 available for free and at will is something we think serious chess players will enjoy.

If we missed any of the best chess games for Android, tell us about them in the comments. You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists.
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