Great MateMaster
Chess: Favorite pastime of Machiavellian rulers, rogue Artificial Intelligences and cool old guys in the park. The game that Goethe proclaimed as the touchstone of intellect. The sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe. The basis for programs as imposing as the human-crushing Deep Blue and as totally sweet as Interplay's Battle Chess. At JayIsGames, we're always on the lookout for quality casual versions of classic board games, and this release of Great Matemaster is just that. The focus here is on chess puzzles, and its huge wealth of content and polished presentation makes it something you should definitely check, mate.
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Game of the week
breezed through the first 85 levels (Mate in 1). Now there are another 1133 levels that I'm assuming are Mate in 2 moves, and that makes it a lot more difficult.
Well done game.
Doesn't seem to have an option for castling?
Flakey:
It does, but it's kind of weird. When in castling position, you can click the king and an "x" will appear over the rook. It's very hard to see due to the white-on-white, but clicking the rook then will castle it.
It didn't see the castle feature either, must have missed the 'X', but it is missing 'en passant'.
For an occasional chess player like me this is a very good game to stay sharp using the puzzle mode or if you just want to try and learn different strategies.
One thing I don't like about the Mate in 2 moves is that you can solve it without going down the proper chain of moves to force Mate in 2 moves. I.e. you'll move somewhere that only mates on the second move if it does something dumb and then voila it does something dumb.
For example, in the first Mate in 2 moves:
If you move the right rook at h1 to h4, the computer should move to f3, because as far as I can tell g2 is a hole that is impossible to cover. However, if you move the left rook at a1 to a4, anywhere the computer moves onto row 3 can be mated (if he moves to d3 then queen from h1 to d2, if he moves to f3 then queen from h1 to h3). The computer in both cases often just moves to row 5, simplifying the whole mate in 2 moves.
Update