Chess Bazaar World Championship Set vs. Official World Champ Set

I understand. I just think sometimes we need to let stuff go. Everyone has a bad day. 

(Edit) But I would say that this is me talking from the outside. I probably would take a different perspective if someone was hassling me online.

You keep hassling me, I'll keep reporting you. 

What did Theendgame3 do that was such a crime?

It was from the other thread started by @Zagryan about the BCE set. It was locked yesterday. https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/bce-repro-from-the-chess-empire?page=6

New year,so lets all be friends.....

I'm up for it but all parties have to sign on and behave themselves otherwise it ain't gonna work.

I'm a realist.I know where it's going to wind up,but ya' never know.

For those who missed it, the New York Times ran an interesting chess equipment article on Christmas Eve that provided some neat details regarding the knights in the World Championship set. Here's the excerpt:

The knights in the set used in World Chess Championship matches ($310 for the pieces and $220 for the board) were inspired by a horse carving from the Parthenon in Athens, said Ilya Merenzon, the chief executive of World Chess, the company that licenses the rights to the matches. The process of creating the set when it was redesigned in 2013 required extensive back-and-forth communication with carvers in India to discuss minutiae like the horse’s smile.

About 10 people specialize in carving knights for the World Chess sets, Mr. Merenzon said. It takes about two weeks to produce 100 sets, with a set of knights requiring about six hours to carve, he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/business/chess-sets-cost-queens-gambit.html

I'm sure that's why there was an extensive back-and-forth communication with the carvers in India :-)

Which Parthenon horse head are they referring to?

Its not the bulging eyed, flared nostriled, open mouthed one I'm familiar with and how does it take 6 hours to carve a faceless pony?

Old man Staunton will be turning in his grave

Sometimes is not all about making a 100% photo-realistic facsimile of a subject for it to take hours of carving and cost hundreds of dollars. Artistic representation of a subject may take just as long and cost just as much. Sophisticated, intelligent, elegant, design in many cases is misleading. Many people will say, "That's it? I could've done that!" My reply to that is, "Yeah, but you didn't." In the case of the WCC knight. That design is EXTREMELY unforgiving. On wrong angle that's off by a few degrees and the whole piece is scrapped. With something so "simple", any tiny minute deviation from the sample, and it's a glaring error. No way to correct it. Start over.

I agree. Many of the Knights in many sets were inspired by the Parthenon horse as we all know but this particular one is a real stretch. I'm not impressed. I could have designed a better knight.

My main criticism is the head doesn't say 'horse'. Horses don't have narrow necks and the necks never arch like that. I think the head more resembles a Bull Terrier.  

At the end of the day a set of chessmen is mostly about the knight's detail and this one falls well short of any realistic expectation.

Does this knight look more like the horse carving from the Parthenon in Athens?

https://chessantiques.com/product/selene-imperial-staunton-chessmen/

Separated at birth.

bulging eyes check

flared nostrils check

open mouthed check

I believe it does, Ilya Merenzon (chief executive of World Chess) should take a sneak peek at that then go and sit on the naughty step for a fortnight!

It certainly does but for $1,900 it better be nothing less than a photo copy.

I just read the article.  The guy says the Championship set Knights were inspired by the horse carving from the Parthenon.  He never said they were modeled that way.  He also said it takes six hours to make the Knights, which is believable.

The Championship pieces, from the article, are designed for correct handling from slow time controls to blitz speeds of play.  He talked about not having pieces drop or fall during play.

The article then quoted the HoS representative about the quality of pieces among other things.

In all honesty, if this set was that bad of a design, it would have been changed a long time ago.

I bought this set about 6 or 7 months ago.  Thanks to the pandemic, I have not been able to play a game with it yet.  However I have had the set out a few times, on a board analyzing.  It’s nice, really.

I say this over and over, but it is really true.  When you have a chess set in real life, on a board and are handling the pieces as in play, it matters.  Pictures on the internet fall short.  And the majority of these pictures are a side view profile.  When you play with a set, the side view is not used unless you stoop down to table top level.

Frank Camaratta has put pictures of his sets on boards in different play positions for a number of years.  It does matter.

Well stated!