Chessnut Air | This HACK will improve your life!

#ChessnutAir #IKEAhack 

One of the issues with playing random opponents via chess.com using the Chessnut Air and other electronic chess boards is that you don’t know whether you’ll have the white or black pieces, until after the match. This means that, on average, you’ll need to rotate the board half the time.

Now, I can imagine that this would be rather a bit tricky with something like the Square Off Pro with its roll up board as you’d need to spin it around without knocking over the pieces. This is much less an issue with the Chessnut Air as it has a rigid wooden base and frame, but nonetheless, is an inelegancy that few people mention.

So, I’m going to share this simple hack that has subtantially improved my quality of life and the enjoyment I get from using the Chessnut Air.

Firstly, I bought a small dedicated “side table” to place and store my Chessnut Air board, phone holder, and pieces. There’s a huge range of side tables, but I chose the “Lindved” from Ikea: https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/lindved-side-table-white-80433896/ 

It’s quite inexpensive, looks quite nice, has a stable base, and the 50 cm diameter (roughly 20-inch) table surface is neither too large or too small. I also really liked the “underloft” which is perfect for storing the chess pieces (in either the pouches or a box) and the phone holder. Having a permanent location for the board meant that I no longer needed to store it in the dedicated carry bag. Although the bag is excellent, getting the board, pieces, and phone holder in-and-out of the bag every time I wanted to play a couple of online games was somewhat tedious.

Secondly, I bought a set of aluminium 12-inch diameter “lazy susan” (rotating table) bearings. I bought these from an Australian eBay seller by simply searching for “lazy susan bearings”. An example from the Australian Amazon store is here: https://www.amazon.com.au/NUZAMAS-Aluminium-Bearings-Turntable-Tabletop/dp/B08D92DVL9/

There is no need to permanently fix the bearings onto the table, or the underside of the Chessnut Air e-board. The bearings have little plastic lugs and simply placing the bearings between the table surface and the board is all that is needed. The weight of the board will keep the bearing stably in place and stop it from sliding around the on table.

You’re welcome!