Don't you want your set to match your board ?

At the London Chess Centre they have a combo with rosewood for the 'black' pieces and squares...

Markovich wrote on 04/15/09 at 17:29:54:


The cross could just be considered as a symbol for the king, not necessarily a religious one. In fact, chess pieces could be ANYTHING as they are only necessary as symbols. I'm not religious either but this hasn't bothered me. Having traditional chess pieces just shows respect for chess's rich history and ancient roots.

jarechu wrote on 04/15/09 at 14:53:27:


Yes I know, and without judging the design, that seems like a rather silly idea to me.  When you look at a rook, you know what it is, after all.

Ebonized Boxwood with decent lacquering is the smartest choice.

Have you seen the new Kasparov piece set design:

http://www.elcorteingles.es/multitienda/producto/mostrar_foto.asp?cimg=039161004...

The rooks are really big and the knights are cool. It is supposed the size of the pieces is proportional to the value of the piece.

Maturin13 wrote on 04/14/09 at 14:05:58:


I got the zagreb 59 in boxwod and ebonized boxwood- much cheaper than real ebony an it is very nice, its not really a copy of the same as the old soviet sets but is in the samestyle- the knights especialy are interestingbut it  gives you the same feel- I like to use it play through soviet era games at home. It is quite large, I find the Rejkyavik 2 set is more practical to play with as the pieces are not so big and seem very clear.

There are at least 2 sorts of rosewood - goldan rosewood alternativel called sheesham wood is much cheaper than the other rosewood.

I am a little worried about the eological effects of using some of the rare woods.

I got ebonized sets as I too was worried about opponents insisting on black and white pieces- I do not know if the rules insist on black and white, probably not when you see the cheap looking pieces the top pros use with the DGT board.

If anybody knows where I can get one of those Soviet-era Russian tournament sets, the ones with little knobs on top of the kings instead of crosses, I would very much like to have one.

I was in the same situation.
At first I thought I need to have high quality stuff,
but then I saw this:

This is the configuration you mainly see in top level chess.
Look at the board and the pieces, the pieces are rather simple, and not complicated. And I already had pieces like this as a present (but I think retail price is 20 Euro), so I only bought myself a board that looks like this (cost 60 euro). So now I have a configuration at home that resembles very much the top level configuraton, still I only find myself playing on the plastic, foldable board .