Apple Platform App Guide

Getting started

Slate Chess asks for nothing when you open it. No account, no sign-up, no email address. The board is there, the engine is already inside the app, and Slate Chess collects nothing about you. Your games are stored in your own iCloud account, so they are on every device you use.

Open the app and you land on the Home screen: a tile for each thing you can start, your rating, and the games you have been working through.

Playing a game

Against Slate. Tap Play with Engine. Pick a level — they run from beginner to grandmaster, and each one is tuned to play like a human of that strength rather than a weakened computer. You can set a clock or play without one.

Rated or casual. Games against the engine can count towards your rating or not, and you choose per game. A session where you are trying something new should not cost you rating, so casual is there for exactly that.

Two players, one device. Tap Create New Game and pass the phone back and forth. This is also how you record a game as you play it over the board.

Recording a game you played over the board

Scan your scoresheet. Point the camera at a paper scoresheet and Slate reads the moves. Check what it read, correct anything it got wrong, and the game joins your library. This is free, and it has no limits.

Or type the moves. If you would rather enter them by hand, play them out on the board and the scoresheet fills in as you go.

Or import a PGN. Any file from a tournament, a database or another app. Slate reads comments, variations, annotation marks and evaluation data, and keeps them.

Or import from Lichess or Chess.com. Type a username and Slate downloads that player's public games, ready to review. There is no sign-in, no password and no account connection, and Slate reads only games that are already public. (Placeholder: steps and screenshot to come.)

Your library

Every game you play, scan or import is kept. A game you have not finished appears at the top of the Home screen so you can carry on with one tap.

Games sort into My games (against people), Vs engines and Study, and you can make your own collections on top of that.

Going through a game

Open any game and you get the board with the scoresheet beside it — or below it on a phone. Tap a move to jump there. Walk forward and back with the arrows under the board, or the arrow keys on a Mac or iPad with a keyboard.

Write on it. Add a comment to any move. Add a variation by playing a different move on the board — Slate asks whether you mean to replace the move or branch from it, so you can never overwrite the record of a finished game by accident. Mark a move good or bad with the standard symbols.

Read it your way. Figurine or letters, English or your own language's piece letters, the scoresheet as a list or in columns like a printed book.

Game Review — what the whole game was worth

Finish a game, press Review, and Slate goes through it move by move.

You get an accuracy figure for each side, a curve showing how the advantage moved, and every mistake marked on it — so you can see the moment the game turned rather than being told about it. Each mistake says what it cost, what the position needed instead, and why.

A review belongs to the game, so it is still there next time you open it.

The coach — asking about one position

Game Review looks at a finished game. The coach answers about the position in front of you, while you are standing on it.

It asks two questions at once. Grade the last move says what the move actually played was worth and what should have been played instead. Evaluate the next move shows the engine's best continuations from here.

You can walk the engine's lines. Tap any move in a line and the board plays it out, so you can see the position the engine is talking about instead of reading it as notation. The line you are walking stays on screen. When one is worth keeping, Keep this line writes it into the game as a variation.

Openings

Slate names the opening as you play it, from a database of several thousand — so you find out what you have been playing all these years.

The opening book shows what is normally played in the position in front of you and how often, drawn from real games rather than from the engine.

Puzzles

A daily puzzle, and a library of them to work through, are free. Drills built around your own recurring mistakes, and the mistake deck that brings back the positions you got wrong, are part of Premium.

There is a Home-screen widget that shows the day's puzzle, and whether you have solved it yet.

Your profile, and what to work on

Slate keeps a rating for you from your games against the engine, and shows how it has moved over time.

The improvement plan is yours to set. When a review finds a motif in your game — hanging pieces, allowing forks, missing a mate — you can add it to a list of things you are working on. Slate then counts how often it has come up since you added it, out of the games you have reviewed, so you can tell whether it is getting better.

Nothing is added to that list without you. Slate does not diagnose you.

Making it yours

Board colours, piece sets, coordinates, sounds, and the notation you read in. There are also printed-diagram board styles, for positions that are going on to paper.

Across your devices

iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV, one app, and one subscription covers all your devices when you sign in with the same Apple Account. Your games sync through your own private iCloud account, so they are on every device you sign in to.

In Messages, you can start a game with somebody in a conversation.

What costs money

Slate Chess is free to start. Playing Slate at any of its levels, your library with iCloud sync, importing games, the scoresheet scanner (with no limits), engine analysis and the puzzle library are all free.

Game Review with the coach is the paid part, called Premium. It also includes the mistake deck and drills aimed at your own weak spots. There are four ways to use it:

• Three free games. Every install starts with three. The first time you use the coach or Game Review on a game it uses one, and that game keeps both for good. Come back to it next month and it is still unlocked.
• A free trial. Paid plans start with a 7-day free trial.
• Monthly or Yearly. One subscription for you, on all your devices when you sign in with the same Apple Account.
• Family. One subscription shared with up to six people through Apple Family Sharing.

Plans, current prices and what each includes are on the Slate Chess home page.