Good: Intuitive, easy to use, beautiful

Bad: Tough to beat, hard to change difficulty

Bottom line: The best chess game currently available for the iPhone

The iPhone App Store is crawling with chess apps. What sets Deep Green apart is that it is easy to use, has gorgeous graphics, and just works the way you would expect a chess game on the iPhone to work.

Set up is a snap. When you start up the app you resume your last game, or you can start a new one by hitting one button and confirming that you want a new game. You then move your pieces by either dragging or selecting a piece and then touching the intended position. If you make a mistake you can take back your move. Also, if you get stuck, you can get a recommendation from the app.

Almost everything else is tucked away in menus. To access your captured pieces you swipe horizontally anywhere on the board. Game info is available at the touch of one button in the lower right corner. If you want to change the difficulty of the computer, you have to hunt in this menu. You touch the “Deep Green” player in the menu and get access to a slider bar that sets the computer opponent difficulty. That’s probably the only part of the whole app that is confusing, and after you do it once you know how to do it.

Overall, the game is delightful to play and really fits in well with the iPhone. Games like first person shooters will never work perfectly on the iPhone, but Deep Green is as perfect a chess app that you can ask for.

If you want a chess game on your iPhone and are willing to shell out $7.99 for one, this is the app for you.