A few notes on chess equipment
The wonderful thing about chess is You need very to start playing - a board, pieces, possibly a table and chairs, and You are off to a flying start. l Here are a few pointers You might consider useful...
Chess Pieces
The best material for chess pieces is wood - there is no doubt about that. That does not mean that chessmen in other materials are unsuitable for playing - it just means theuy are unsuitable for tournament play. Wooden chesspieces for competitive are generally turned, knights are carved using a pantograph program or a few standardized cuts - up to 14 or more work steps are needed to produce a one-piece knight. Two-piece knights are inferior for tournament or blitz play - who wants to lose a horse's head in the midst of a battle! Weighting means inserting a lead (or iron) plug in the turners cavity in the bottom of the piece - formerly liquid lead was poured in, but this is first of all very unhealthy, and the head stresses are likely to crack the piece. Felt pads are essential to permit smooth and noiseless placing of pieces on the board - and save the board veneer from scratches. Wooden chesspieces come in a plethora of forms - but for offical competition they have to be Staunton type and size 5 or 6 (king 87-89 mm or 93-95 mm) - by decree of FIDE (see FIDE handbook, Section C. 02).
Chess pieces in Staunton style
In 1849 the London firm of John Jacques and Nathaniel Cook had a chess piece design patented which caused a minor revolution in chess - the Staunton chessmen. Jaques and Cie. had the good sense to draught in the leading British chess authority of the day, Howard Staunton, who for a consideration let his name be used for the design - and even actively promoted the new chessmen in his newspaper articles and various appearances, signing the first few hundrd sets personally - later sets were still distinguished by a repoduced Statunon signature long after the man passed away!
While including certain features of earlier or existing chess pieces these Staunton chessmen had a lot of advantages to offer, namely
- rugged construction,
- easy production by turners,
- distinctive features - like horse heads modelled on the Elgin marble horses,
- and heavy promotion by the grand old man of British Chess of the day, Howard Staunton.
Naturally all kinds of turners and manufactureres started imitating and varying the Jacques design, despite the patent protection - and very soon the Staunton chessmen started to dislodge existing designs like Regency, old English, St. George's or other designs from the boards. Thousands of chessmen were exported from England into the whole world, and established the design in the overseas colonies of the Empire (later the USA), all over Europe, in Russia and mediterranean countries. In 1927 the newlyfledged World Chess Federation FIDE decreed the Staunton chess pieces to be obligatory henceforth in international competition - and therefore sounded the death knell for all other national designs, like
- spanish chessmen,
- Regency chessmen,
- Austrian chessmen (as used fe in the Karlsbad tourneys),
- and sundry other national variations.
As a result, the Staunton design was incorporated in slighlty localized variations in many countries, leading to ever different national or local interpretations of the Staunton formula. Purists may cringe at this statement - but Staunton is today a generic name for competition chessmen, and not any more for the particular chess pieces produced and commercialized by John Jacques & Sons in London, the oldest sports company in the world. Jacques itself has been reduced to selling nostalgia replicas and luxury class versions of their classic designs - chess is a minor affair for this prestigious company nowadays, which pioneered table tennis, is a leading provider of cricket equipment, and lots of other sports hardware.
The Staunton scale for chess pieces
Staunton pieces and the measures instituted (3.5 ", 3.75 ", 4 ", 4.50" club size) by Jacques have led to an internationally prevalent size scale for chess pieces, with size 5 and 6 being the official competition sizes, as detailed in FIDE handbook Section C.02. Slight variations from the prescribed height are acceptable - for offical competitons FIDE decrees though, that both players must agree to the chess pieces used!
There is no scale for the base width, though - the rule of thumb runs somewhere for a relation of height to base of 6 to 4.5, FIDE suggests the base width be between 40 and 50 % of height.
The scale starts at
Staunton 00 king height 55 mm
St. 0 60 mm
St. 1 66 mm
st. 2 70 mm
St. 3 76 mm
st. 4 82 mm
St. 5 87 mm (Standard tournament size)
St. 6 93-95 mm (Standard tournament size )
St. 7 100 mm
St. 8 108 mm
St.9 114 mm
St. 10 118 mm
St. 11 124 mm
St. 12 130 mm
St. 13 136 mm
St. 14 144 mm
St. 15 150 mm
Plastic pieces
Plastic pieces are made via molds and injection machines and are therefore industrial mass products. They usually have a joint down both sides, reflecting the place where the two halves of the mold touch - in good quality pieces this joint should be filed or polished away. What is important for use in competition is that the pieces are massively formed. solid throughout without cavities, and the plastic mixture be jnot too light specifically. Literally hundreds of mixtures are possible, mostly involving PU, PVC, Acril, Rubber and many different resins and trace additives. Weighting plastic pieces is useful to improve stability, as is felting. Excellent plastic pieces are made today - but the best plastic pieces - f.e. milled from solid blocks of topgrade resin - will not be as agreeable to use as the poorest wooden pieces.....
Wood boards
Basically there are three types of wooden boards:
- veneer boards - wood foil (1 - 3 mm thick) glued on to wooden bases,
- marquetry boards - wood plates (2 - 5 mm thick) glued onto wooden surfaces,
- and solid wood boards - either wood blocks glued together in a framework or massive wood boards with a board painted, stamped, cut or pyroengraved on.
Massive wooden boards are nice , durable and very rare nowadays - the value of wood itself, the work involved and their tendency to distort have virtually caused these items to disappear. If You want one, every competent cabinetmaker can make one to Your specifications - sometimes they are offered on ebay!
Marquetry boards are a lot of work too - and even more likely to develop cracks, stresses and even to have squares belly out, as the glue reacts with moisture or heat. They are sometimes made in Indonesia, in parts of South America - and You find antique marquetry boards and tables. It is not just the work involved that has made them become a rare item: wood being a natural substance is prone to arch, move and split, depending both on natural circumstances like heat and moisture, as on the maturity of wood.
98 % of todays wooden chessboards are veneered - and generally not on wood, see above - but on plywood, which is fairly neutral to heat and moisture, and ensures that the playing surface stays flat. These veneer boards are easier and cheaper to make - as the veneering is an important part of todays furniture industry, and veneer boards are a minor sideline for these highly specialized manufacturies. What is interesting is the quality of the veneers, the thickness and size of the support, whether boards are veneered back and front, or just front, and whether they are properly varnished- or even varnish sealed in poliester, making them impervious to liquids! Veneer needs to be properly glued down pressed and dried - the margin if existent shd be well set off colourwise from the boards squares, and the rimline really delimit the squares. Large margins improve the looks of a board - but boards without margin are much easier to fit onto a small table, leaving space for pens, clocks, glasses or food! As with every veneer, strong sunlight, heat, impact and hot liquids will discolour er even destroy the veneer cover.
Clocks
For school and fun chess, mechanical clocks are much to be preferred to electronic ones. Digital timers are much more sensitive to hard knocks - any of these fragile solderings on the motherboard can go - and while cost has come down a lot, it is a waste of value to misuse expensive and complicated digital timers for blitz play. In mechanical clocks, the action mechanism is important - clock stopper, buttons, balance lever - in digital timers there are a whole lot of modes that have to be incorparated - namely the FIDE official times, a move counter, free programming for various play periods,etc. But here, the simple physical details - good visibility and quality LCD, noiseless and smooth buttons or levers - also count. Since the first digital timers appeared, a lot of change has taken place - not least timers have become cheaper - but some timers still have more buttons to operate than a laptop computer. Prefer those timers where
- You have good repair service ,
- which are easy to operate and reprogram,
- which offer a retainment function (moves or programmed modes),
- which have replaceable buttons and strong box (US-Chronos!) ,
- and a creditable warranty - that means production and coproration NOT situated in faroff China!
For cheaper timers - chinese no-name - do not expect the warranty to hold! The best brands will offer both service and a creditable two year warranty against manufacture faults - for mishandling or breakage though mishandling, there is no warranty! Here mechanical clocks do have an advantage - any clockmaker and many amateurs are capable of fixing a coil break, or other minor mishaps.
What boards to choose
A board shd not only properly display the chessmen, but relate to them in style and size. As a general rule, plastic chessmen go on plastic boards, and wooden chessmen on wooden boards. The size for tournament chessmen is best determined by the rule of being able to fit 4 pawns onto a square comfortably. For non-tournament play or use, this rule is not dogma - for example, Regency chessmen are very high with a small base, and are better posted on smaller squares. On the other hand, other chessmen like Viennese style may have really broad bases requiring larger squares. The wood colours also count - pieces shd be of similar, but not the same colours - there must be a slight contrast for visibilities sake. Marginless boards occupy less space, boards with margins provide space for parking taken pieces. Suit Your personal taste - but if You do not know what to pick among the large choice available, simply buy a combo or board and pieces as sorted together by Your chess dealer.
Wallboards
Wallboards are a leftover of analog times that will not go away - despite digital projectors coupled with notebooks etc. They are simply easy to use, easy to operate, facileto transport and to stow in a car - and ideal for demonstrating chess positions frontally to mdeium to large audiences. The oldest type are simply inclined wood boards with wood ridges to stand the wooden pieces on - still used in the CORUS tournaments or in Moscow tournaments for example - later ones are generally magnetic, permitting the wallboards to be hung vertically on a wall or a picture stand. One piece wallboards are heavy and unwieldy to transport and set up - folding boards like ours are much handier for traveling chess teachers for example. Cheaper roll-up versions - chess teachers favorites - have apertures to slot chesspieces into - these lack a flat demonstration surface, and will fray with time.
Our wallboard is rock solid - a folding metal plastic covered case with carry grips, providing superb magnetic hold for the magnetic pieces - other wallboards only sport a thin metal foil under the board which will not provide the same adherence - pieces often drop with a loud crack, which may be a great nuisance.
Indian Chess Pieces
I do not at present stock chess pieces made in India (with one exception) - not for any prejudice or other reason, but mainly because every chess shop in the world stocks them! India is the motherland of chess, with a great chess movement, produces a plethora of chess pieces from the worst to the best - but I prefer to offer chess pieces made in Europe, in styles not offered or copied by Indian makers, superb controllable quality, and even part of European heritage! This goes even more for chess boards - European veneer boards are of superb quality - and it does not make sense to import heavy Indian chess boards anyway as the cost of transport is forbidding. Another factor to consider is that Indian-made tournament chess pieces are almost always straight copies of established European designs. The famous Lardy design was copied long ago by indian manufacturers, causing Lardy to go bankrupt faced with disocunt Indian competition! Jacques designs are copied as well, and recent indian designs rehash traditional Euopean styles like Regency or St. George - even Russian chessmen - in replica form! We are lucky that many European makers and craftsmen continue to turn out classy or distinct chessmen for tournament as well as amateur chess.
For collectors, indian chessmen past and present still are of great interest - even though quality has come down sharply as the manufacturies in India start working with CNC machinery, and less and less manual labour. Esepcially interesting are old chess pieces from the time of the British Raj - but please feel free to form Your own assessment on the basis of Indian chessmen seen and used all over in Europe and the USA.