My current playing set-up. Whats yours?

The set on the lanai.

Here is mine

The stamps on the Kings' Rooks and Knights is both functional and homage to Jaques. Stamping the King's base is homage to Jaques. I kind of like it for that reason.

Stamping is nowadays rarely done, but when it is, you have a story to tell. Ordinary folks don't know descriptive notation anymore and it feels oh so good in the tummy when one can drop a nice little history lesson on the guests.

-Izmet Fekali (http://bestchessmenever.com)

I guess when I said it was "functional," I was thinking of descriptive notation, which I was raised on, and which I'm still fond of. I love pulling out an old book every so often and going through a game in descriptive. Irving Chernev. Pachman. Thinking on it some more, Kingside stamping is homage to descriptive notation as well as Jaques and the other English companies who introduced it. I love it.

-Izmet Fekali

Gorgeous. And the original Dubrovnik is awesome, too.

Today Is Bone On Stone 

Wow!

Yeah. I really wanted to make a joke, but that set up really beautiful. 

D2, there you go again, stoned to the bone!

Here's the set-up at the end of last night's epic match. 

Been known to be wrong before but, did you happen to slide that white queen over a few squares ? 

B7 is where she wound up.  Black had fianchettoed his QB. After I sacked on g6 and opened the h-file, my Queen checked at h8. When his King fled to the second rank, she checked at h7 and scooped up the B at b7, leaving h7 for my KR to join the party from h1, where it had been supporting her incursion. The CB Rook (with its six crenellations in the turret) has a nice weight that felt particularly good crashing down on h7, whereupon Black resigned in the face of forced mate. White's attack had been fueled by an Andechs Hels, absolutely and without question the best beer in the world, and a couple of excellent Czech pilsners brewed right here in the Granite State. Black drowned his sorrows in a London Pride, ironic in that the attack arose from a London System.

hello - my name is Rob and I am brand new here.  I would like your advice... we have an old table in our living room that is dark wood, with black leather on a lot of the seats.  It has a black leather table top, with fading gold 2" squares. 

In this situation, what color chessmen would you recommend?  Matching the table, or finding some which go with black/gold squares, or simply buy a new board, lay it over the existing squares, and start from scratch?  Thanks for any advice.  Here are some photos:

cgrau - I wasn't a huge fan of black and white chess boards until I saw your set up!

wow - thank you for that suggestion!  We will give that a try! 

And you think ebony would be the right color for dark... not a rosewood.  I understand that some contrast between pieces and squares would help if we were playing several games in a row, but I would probably only be playing two games in a row on it.  I could buy a green and white board if it went longer than that.

Thanks, QK!

Our local British Beer Company has both ESB and London's Pride on tap. We drink both while we play, but we've been into German brews ever since we spent a few weeks there last summer. My son, who was stationed at Vilseck for four years, took us to the Andechs Monastery and Brewery, which he had raved about. Then there was Augustiner, Hofbrau, Paulaner, and all the other Bavarian beers. They've just begun importing Andechs, and I couldn't be happier.

Moon, that's a stunning table! Does that leather section come out? It looks like it's a game table that might have a backgammon or some other kind of game board underneath. I would hesitate using the same technique I used on wood on leather, as I'd be afraid the tape would damage the leather.