The Best Chess Apps for Kids and Chess Lovers
When I’m not writing about children’s picture books or board games to share with the family here on Dad Suggests - I’m actually an avid chess player and coach. I spend quite a good hunk of my free time playing chess, and I have the wonderful opportunity to teach the beautiful game to about 300 kids every year.
I also love to share the game with my 7-year-old son and my 3-year-old daughter (obviously in very different ways and to very different degrees). I’m passionate about the benefits of teaching chess to kids, and I deeply believe it’s extremely positive for cognitive development, particularly when it comes to the frontal lobe and the development of executive functions.
But that’s all ignoring the fact that the game is simply fun and entirely engrossing. It’s something you can literally study your entire life and always have more to learn. It’s sometimes considered an art, sometimes a sport, and sometimes a science. But I like to say it’s all three.
Over the years, I’ve collected a sizable number of chess tools to add to my collection - both as a player and as a teacher. I’ve come across many favorite books, many favorite websites, and I’ve even amassed a sizable collection of my favorite chess apps.
Some of the games in my chess apps folder on my iPad are designed and better suited for kids like my 7-year-old son. Some of them are more just for me. But the vast majority are actually chess apps that we enjoy together - and he was very helpful in identifying his favorite for this article.
These are our very favorite chess apps, both for kids and adults - and they very much run the gamut regarding their audience and purpose. Some are the best apps for playing chess, some are the best places for studying, and some are even fun arcade games that creatively twist the rules of chess so much you’ll barely recognize it. I hope you’re able to find something new on this list to inspire those big or little chess fans in your life to keep exploring this amazing game.
Chess Apps for Kids
1. ChessKid.com (Chess for Kids - Play & Learn)
ChessKid.com is simply the most essential chess app for kids who are trying to improve at chess. I’ve used the website ChessKid.com for many years as a teacher, and I don’t know what I’d do without it.
ChessKid is owned by Chess.com, so if you’re familiar with their website, a lot of things are structured the same. You can sign up for a free account and play as many games as you want. You also get a small allotment of daily puzzles. But if you want unrestricted access to the puzzles, videos, and lessons, you’ll need to sign up for a gold membership. And I couldn’t possibly recommend it any more highly if your kids want to get better at chess.
FunMaster Mike’s instructional videos for kids are second to none. Essential concepts are explained alongside cartoon animations that engage kids in learning chess better than anything I’ve ever seen. The app also features a fantastic crash course on how the pieces move and how to deliver checkmate. This app is truly a no-brainer for young chess fans.
2. Magnus’ Kingdom of Chess
Update: Magnus’ Kingdom of Chess is now known as Dragonbox Learn Chess in the app store.
Magnus’ Kingdom of Chess is a very cool RPG - named after world chess champion Magnus Carlsen - designed to subconsciously teach kids how to play chess while having fun. The trick is that the characters in the game are chess pieces that can only traverse the world map in the way that piece moves in chess. For instance, you might run into barriers in a corner that force you to squeeze through diagonally with a bishop. Or you might have a bridge that you need a knight to hop across.
As the game goes on, children are also introduced to puzzles and battles that teach concepts like avoiding capture and delivering checkmate. Meanwhile, your kids are collecting coins, finding new friends, and discovering new outfits for their characters. They are simply being immersed in the game. And by the final battle the entire chess board is set up for your final test.
Magnus’ Kingdom of Chess is one of two games our 7-year-old decided are tied for his very favorite chess apps of all time. You can read much more about it in our featured article.
Chess Apps for Playing Others and Studying
1. Chessable
Chessable is a fantastic, innovative studying system for chess players. The basic idea is giving yourself the ability to drill yourself on anything you want - like basic checkmates for instance - or to consume a chess book digitally with the ability to play the moves while you’re reading. But it honestly truly shines with building your opening repertoire.
For years you could already save the fantastic website to your home screen as an app on iOS - but now their official app has just hit the app store as well. The company has been around for almost a decade, but its popularity has deservedly really taken off during the last year - especially with the addition of many famous chess players selling their own books and opening systems on the platform. In fact, lots of famous chess books have been given the complete digital conversion on Chessable now - complete with being able to play and drill the moves yourself, and sometimes even with accompanying videos.
What really sets Chessable apart is the focus on spaced repetition as a learning method. If you forget a move in your opening - the system has you do it over and over again until your opening repertoire is muscle memory. It also features an addicting point system and daily streak system - and it will remind you when it’s time to study your moves again. It’s undeniable that opening theory is a very big part of chess - particularly the higher you climb the rating ladder - and to me Chessable is far and away the number one platform to drill your openings. Best of all, it’s free to sign up, and there are lots of free courses to practice.
As a coach I had all my students sign up to practice their openings, and you can even build and share your own repertoires with others. I’ve purchased a lot of chess books in my time, and I have to tell you, buying a digital copy of the same book - complete with videos and the ability to actually practice the moves from the book - is absolutely brilliant. Not to mention that Chessable is also smart enough to add extra focus to all the moves you struggle with over time. This is truly a great learning system.
2. Chess.com (Chess - Play & Learn)
Chess.com has been my home for chess studies and fun for many years now. They are my personal favorite choice for everything I need as far as chess improvement is concerned. It’s a free app, as most of the apps on this list are, and you can even make a free account and play as many games against other players from across the world as you want.
I’ve paid for a membership for several years because I love the unrestricted access to all of their videos, lessons, and tactics training. Not to mention you get unlimited tries at their latest addiction - Puzzle Rush (which is now available on the app as well). In that mode you’re trying to solve as many puzzles as you can in 5 minutes, but after three strikes you’re out as well.
Puzzle Rush is a brilliant addition to the chess entertainment landscape, and it’s just one reason I consider Chess.com’s app the most essential chess app for adult chess fans. No folder of chess apps on your iPad is complete without it.
3. Lichess
Lichess.org is one of the big 3 online chess providers - the other two being Chess.com and Chess24. Lichess’ claim to fame is that it is an open-source chess server. It’s also completely free (and ad free) - because the site is run on donations.
On top of this, Lichess also has a great reputation for their grueling arenas and their chess variants. These tournaments can lead to some very long and entertaining chess sessions - both as a player and a fan. You can find tournaments for popular variants like Chess960, tournaments where everyone starts with the same opening, and even endurance tournaments where you try to score the most points over several hours.
It’s worth mentioning that many of the world’s best players join in on these tournaments, and, as a chess fan, it can be incredibly entertaining to sit back and watch them compete for hours.
4. Chess24
Chess24.com is the last of the big 3 chess providers as I like to call them. These are sites and apps that first and foremost offer you the ability to play live games against people from all over the world - and, most importantly, are popular enough to get you good opponents absolutely whenever you want.
Like Chess.com, Chess24 also has the option for a premium subscription if you want more access to training tools. They include unrestricted access to their lessons, videos, games database, and their tactics trainer. They are also often broadcasting live shows of some of the world’s best chess tournaments.
Personally, the biggest difference for me about Chess24 is their recent purchase of the website Chessable.com. I really love Chessable for studying my openings, reading interactive chess books, burning my blunders into my mind, and much more. And I heard they’re working on a Chessable app as well - and that will absolutely make this list when it launches.
5. Play Magnus
The appeal of Play Magnus is a pretty neat one - it’s designed to mimic the gameplay and skill level of world champion Magnus Carlsen. Can you beat Magnus when he was just 5 years old? What about 8?
Progressing in your chess skills enough to challenge the next level of a boring computer opponent has always been a pretty dry endeavor. But Play Magnus has figured out a very clever way to humanize the whole thing. It actually makes the whole process of improving to beat the next computer incredibly entertaining and engaging.
Play Magnus also offers a yearly competition known as Play Magnus Live - where all players can compete to earn the opportunity to actually play the world champion in real life. All you have to do is make a free account, play in the app, and climb the global high scores list.
6. iChess
iChess is a very large collection of chess puzzles taken from the games of master chess players. It’s also completely free. But you can upgrade it for a mere $2 to add the ability to upload your own files of puzzles.
The puzzles that the game comes with are split into beginner, intermediate and advanced difficulty levels. I love solving these chess tactics, and I also enjoy taking a peak at what game the puzzle came from and what year it was played.
But the most useful thing about iChess, and what I really enjoy about it, is that the entire database of chess puzzles is offline - meaning that when I’m in the car or on an airplane, it’s often one of the only chess apps I can use for training. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been away from wifi, wanted to study chess, and iChess was my only savior.
7. Follow Chess
If you’re a fan of professional chess, there simply isn’t a better way to keep up to date with the best tournaments around the world than Follow Chess. Even if the tournament is being broadcasted, Follow Chess is still the best place to look to instantly see live positions of every board, tournament standings, results from past rounds, and even play through all of the games.
This is definitely an essential app if you’re even mildly interested in keeping up with the best chess being played around the world. When there’s a big tournament like the Sinquefield Cup or the Candidates’ Tournament - I’m opening Follow Chess every day to flip through the games and check out the current standings and pairings.
Sometimes the ability to flip through some of the old games is locked behind a pro subscription to the service, but for only $5.99 a year you unlock everything - including access to all games and even notifications for game results and round starts.
Creative Chess Apps for Fun and Games
1. ReallyBadChess
ReallyBadChess is the other app that tied for my 7-year-old’s favorite chess app. When I first showed it to him, he thought it was completely hilarious. And I absolutely love it. It’s important to have a good mixture of chess apps for serious study and chess apps that are a bit off-the-wall, and this is definitely one of the latter.
The concept being ReallyBadChess is that the starting positions are insanely chaotic. You still start with 16 pieces and they fill up the first 2 ranks, but you simply have no idea which pieces you’re going to have. You might start with 7 knights or 4 queens. It’s a madhouse. ReallyBadChess also has daily and weekly challenges, and a ranked mode that gets trickier as you improve. It’s seriously a blast - and it really has a great name, doesn’t it?
And, speaking as a chess teacher, I can tell you that this game truly has benefits for your chess game as well. Because of the utter chaos on the board, you’re absolutely forced to study the board more than ever. You have to figure out which pieces you have, which pieces your opponent has, and what’s pointing at what. Your board vision training is actually kicked into overdrive and it’s incredibly useful for kids and beginners.
2. Chezz
Chezz is another incredibly innovative chess game for phones and tablets that turns chess into an RTS game. RTS stands for real-time strategy games, which is the opposite of a turn-based strategy game. And if you’re having trouble imagining chess without taking turns - that’s exactly what makes this game so shocking and innovative.
In actuality, playing chess as an RTS game is incredibly fun. Each piece has a timer when you move it - also known as a cool down. But this is literally the only restriction to movement in the game. You can move absolutely any piece you want at any time, at the same time your opponent is moving their pieces, as long as your piece isn’t on a cool down. And if you’re ever able to catch their king, you win.
You can play against others online, but there’s also a fantastic adventure mode with increasing challenges, and an upgrade system for increasing speed and decreasing cool down times for different pieces. Chezz is a really fun and chaotic change of pace for chess players and I highly recommend it.
3. Solitaire Chess (SolChess)
This is the digital version of the very fun puzzle game Solitaire Chess from ThinkFun. We actually added the board game to our list of the best logic games for kids because it’s so much fun. And this version for phones and tablets is the same great game with even more puzzles - and of course very portable too.
The point of the game is to capture every piece on the board one at a time until you only have one piece left. Every move you make has to be a capture, and you’ve only solved the puzzle if you get down to one piece. And it’s not only highly challenging and entertaining, it’s also a great tool for training calculation and vision as far as combinations are concerned.
As of now, ThinkFun needs to update the app to work with the latest version of iOS, but if you’re on an older operating system (or ThinkFun gets this fixed soon) this is an extremely fun chess app and a beloved time killer in my collection.
4. Hipster Chess
Hipster Chess is a new discovery for us that both my 7-year-old and I are enjoying quite a bit. It’s a combination of a match-3 video game and chess. If you’ve ever played a game like Bejeweled then you will get the idea very quickly.
In Hipster Chess you’re trying to get 4 chess pieces in a row to clear them and earn points. You can play on normal mode, blitz mode, or even challenge friends in real time. I’ve always enjoyed going for high scores in match-3 games like this, and now I think I may have found the one perfectly suited for me. How can I say no to a puzzle game that blends in chess as well as Hipster Chess does?
I love games like this where you still move the chess pieces the way they’re supposed to be moved - but you have a completely different objective from normal chess. It’s honestly great chess practice for kids - because board vision and seeing where pieces can go is such an important part of learning chess for kids and beginners.
Do you have any chess players in your family? If so, make sure to check out our list of the best gifts for chess players, and the benefits of teaching chess to kids. And did we miss any of your favorite chess apps? Let us know in the comments!
