Acid Ape Chess GM Edition

Acid Ape Studios

In-app purchases

About this game

Acid Ape Chess is the multi-purpose chess suite aimed at the serious player.

Acid Ape Chess is organized with a tools philosophy in mind. You can leverage its modular design to perform common and less common chess-related tasks.

Acid Ape Chess focuses on:

• quality;
• elegance;
• ergonomics;
• versatility.

Some Acid Ape Chess features:

Online chess

• Play on FICS, ICC and Lichess
• Watch live online games
• View online players and their game history
• Non-disruptive in-game chat using a subwindow at the bottom of the chessboard

Chess engines

• Play against UCI or CECP chess engines
• Organize engine duels
• 3 strong builtin engines are provided (Arasan, cheng4 and Scorpio)
• Use third-party engines
• Adjust engine-specific settings
• Use custom PolyGlot (.bin) and Arena (.abk) opening books
• Use custom neural networks

Analysis

• Analyze with multiple chess engines
• Display the principal variation and stats
• Display an evaluation graph
• Display Syzygy 7-men EGTB results (uses an online service)
• Easily create, annotate and move variations with our move list editor
• Automatic analysis (apply the best move every x seconds)
• Auto annotate games using a chess engine and the endgame tablebases
• Advanced move indicators displaying engine evaluation scores

Premium access to our online database

• 210 million positions
• 3.6 million games, from the 1800s to 2023
• 270,000 OTB players, from club players to superstars
• Used by the opening explorer
• Can be used as an opening book for chess engines
• Search for players, display games, filter by ELO and opening
• Our database is updated continuously
• The perfect tools for your game preparation

PGN support

• Your played games are autosaved
• The PGN Explorer: a file manager with PGN support
• Edit your games (headers, move tree, annotations)
• Load and save PGN files
• Clipboard support
• Share your games as PGN download links

OTB chess

• Watch live games from major professional tournaments
• Search our online database for players and games
• Use a stylish fullscreen clock for your OTB games
• Play OTP (over the phone): two players on the same phone or tablet.

Electronic boards and clocks

• Drivers for the DGT Bluetooth e-Board, the DGT USB e-Board, the DGT Smart Board, the DGT Revelation II, the DGT3000 and the DGT Pi *
• Play online, engine and OTB games with your physical board and clock
• Connect via Bluetooth or USB

Blindfold play

• The board and move list are hidden
• You input your moves via speech recognition
• Opponent moves are announced via speech synthesis

Tactical puzzles

• Solve 900 puzzles split into 3 levels of difficulty
• Import your own PGN puzzles

Simuls

• Challenge from 2 to 16 engine opponents
• Play blindfold simuls

A comprehensive user manual

• Explains everything about AAC, and more!
• Presented as a book, accessible from AAC
• Contains numerous use cases and tips

Extra features

• Play Chess960
• Choose from many different board and piece themes
• Enter local player details, with country flag, chess title and ELO
• Use the position editor to encode positions for playing or analysis
• Move speech recognition and synthesis
• A LCD chess clock modeled after real hardware, with sound and flag display
• Displays your personal statistics against your opponent
• Use a standalone clock app for your non-connected OTB games

This is Acid Ape Chess Grandmaster Edition, containing all the features.

* DGT drivers are the only optional purchase inside the application. We have set an unique worldwide base price for this optional feature, in €. The final price is fixed by Google Play and varies depending on local taxes, VAT, and currency exchange rates. To give you an idea, it is 59.99 € (VAT included) in Germany.

Ratings and reviews

Good app, despite being expensive. It has many features not found elsewhere. The voice command is quite accurate, easy to use and it works even on Offline mode (if you downloaded the language offline for Google Voice). COULD YOU PLEASE ADD THE FOLLOWING FEATURE: Could you add please the possibility that the top half screen shows the board and the bottom half shows the clock and the moves can be made either manually by touching squares on the board (top half) or made by voice command by touching ANYWHERE on the clock area (i.e. the bottom half of the screen). At the moment the closest to this option is when not on blindfold and the "Move list" bottom half is shown but the microphone icon is very small. My proposed option would allow the voice command (by simply touching anywhere on the bottom half screen) whilst still showing the board (on the top half screen). I do have an issue: when adding new chess engines, the app reloads chess engines list everytime the screen is modified.

This chess app is top of the class, especially if you own a DGT board because it connects flawlessly. The interface seems a little complicated, but after a while you realize the concept of windows is powerful. I love the zillions different options available (play against lots of different engines, online on lichess, ICC, etc or OTB with a friend. Good analysis options. The only downside: it's expensive, especially for the DGT connection. But it's top-quality, with a comprehensive user manual.

I bought this primarily for use with my DGT e-board. Yes, it's an expensive app especially with the additional cost for the DGT driver - but it is the BEST I can find for my uses. You get what you pay for. However, 4/5 stars bc of the clock lag when using external DGT3000. I typically play 3|2 blitz games with friends and this is obviously a huge issue for that time control. For years the manual has said, "In a future version... this issue will be eliminated" (16.13.1.1.3). Any update on when we can expect to see that happen?

What's new

- A Lichess protocol change broke Lichess support: fixed.
- Per-engine core settings are now respected again.