Knights Up Close

Just shot a new video on a dozen+ chess knights up close.

http://www.bestchessmenever.com/blog/files/knights-up-close.html

Which one is your favourite?

-Izmet

Thanks for the nice video Jonas.!

I'm surprised at how crude that modern Jaques of London knight is given the cost of the set (£250 / $393), and not even real ebony for the black pieces. It is however my favorite knight out of the ones in your video, because it is the closest to an original Staunton knight. The first knight you showed (ChessBazaar) has more detail, but it is the "fierce knight" style, which I don't like as much (even though I have a set from Chopra with that same style knight).

The knight from the official FIDE chess set is ugly as homemade shoes, and is nothing more than a crude copy of the almost-as-ugly knight from the "Sheffield Luxury Chess Set":

Actually, I don't know which one came first, so the one from the Sheffield set might be a more detailed copy of the FIDE knight, but either way, they both fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. The Sheffield knight at least looks like a horse, despite its malformed pencil neck, while the FIDE knight might be a horse, or it might be a llama.

I also like what you call the "American knight" (USCF "Club Special" design); it is a tournament classic. I have that same set (made in India boxwood version of the plastic USCF "Club Special" pieces); I've had it for 15 years:

By the way, where are you from, Transylvania? You sound like Count Dracula.

Lot of nice designs from HoS are missing :)

Can't understand how you included the BCE knight and skipped the Imperial and Sultan.

BCE might be nice looking design (for some) but doesn't require any special carving skills by the artisan.

I think regarding the carving of the knight people have such funny ideas. The design is more important than the skill level required to carve it, imo. Many of the most intricate designs look horribly out of place compared to the pieces they accompany. A more minimalistic design is all about the lines and proportions and quality of the materials and finish, and should be judged as such.

Here's some knights from the HOS Player's series.  I like these better than the Jaques and the set is "only" $139.  Please excuse my poor photography skills.

YES...HOS certainly deserves a mention, especially when Frank was there. Don't get me wrong, I love my Noj Dubrovnik, but my actual favorite playing set that I mostly use is a Staunton from HOS when Frank had it. The knights on this set are my fav players...

The design is indeed the most important thing, and in my view, an ideal design already exists, i.e., the early Jaques of London Staunton design, like so - http://i.imgur.com/8jcXTZ6.jpg

Any significant departure from that design is for the worse in my opinion, and that applies to departures which are more elaborate as well as less elaborate.

And "minimalistic" is just a euphemism for "crude", thus relatively cheap and easy to manufacture.

Crappov, I actually have the HoS Player's series as well (see my profile pic with the cow), but the knight is my least favourite piece of the lot, it finds itself somewhere in the middle of simplicity and naturalism without deciding where it wants to belong, and I don't really care for the mane at the top as it protrudes somewhat like a mohawk. But I do love the bishops.

Unfortunately my set has some quality issues, like the pawns don't stand straight, but that's off topic for this thread.

Yep, those knights are punk rockers but I kind of like them.  :)  Love the bishops, too.  I take it you were unable to resolve the quality issues with HOS?  Too bad.

I also like the plastic Marshall knight:

Nice video, Izmet.

For those who said that Izmet should have included HoS knights, you do realise don't you that these knights are from his personal collection? You can't expect him to go out and buy everyone's favourite sets just to include their knights in his video.

You spelled "favorite" and "realize" wrong... Wonder if you realized that...

No, he didn't.

American spellings...

"Realize" is not specifically an American spelling; that's a myth. It is a much older spelling than "realise", and is correct in both American and British English. The Oxford English Dictionary prefers "realize":

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/03/ize-or-ise/

As for "favorite" and other "or" vs. "our" words, that isn't specifically an American spelling either. In nearly all, if not all, cases, the "or" spelling is older, which means it predates the existence of the United States. For example, "color" is from the Latin word "color", and the Middle English word was "color" as well, as was the Old French. At some point, the French word became "colour", and around this time the French were considered fashionable in England, and it became an alternative English spelling. The guy who wrote England's first de facto standard English dictionary in the mid 1700s (Samuel Johnson) happened to prefer those "fancy" French spellings, and voila, they became "official", because they were "in the dictionary".

Meanwhile in the soon-to-be United States, the colonists (mostly from England) simply continued to spell words the same as they always had. When our version of Samuel Johnson (Noah Webster) wrote our first de facto standard English dictionary in the early 1800s, he mostly stuck with the older, standard spellings, making them "official" for us.

By the way, "aluminum" is also the original spelling. In fact, the spellings popularly associated with American English tend to be closer to the way things were spelled in England before the United States existed, than to the spellings popularly associated with current British English.

MeTristan wrote:

ROBB_CHESS wrote:

You spelled "favorite" and "realize" wrong... Wonder if you realized that...

No, he didn't.

American spellings...

I feel the opposite. They're British.

kaynight wrote:

Here's my favourite.

Where? Your prof pic?

"Favorite" and "realize" are American.

I said:

"Realize" is not specifically an American spelling; that's a myth. It is a much older spelling than "realise", and is correct in both American and British English. The Oxford English Dictionary prefers "realize":

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/03/ize-or-ise/

And so on. In other words, your claim has already been refuted. See post #15.

I stand corrected then...