Ultimate chess set

Nothing like having the OG baller Women's World Chess Champion for over a decade in the past posting pics with the Ultimates V.3!  

You might also notice they are using one of my wood grain mousepad chess boards in Rosewood too!

thanks

Shelby Lohrman

American Chess Equipment

Any chance for a quote about the Ultimates v3 from Susan? 

Hello everyone.  I am new here.

How does the HOS Marshal set compare to this one quality wise?

I own both the HoS Marshall and the Ultimate V.3 sets.

The HoS set is nice.  And really is a good quality plastic set.  I like the piece colors a lot.  For me this is a nice, regular set.  Of course there are others in this category.

The Ultimate V.3 is a better playing set, in my opinion.  The appliance white and black colors are not bad.  This is the plastic set I can and will grab when I want a plastic set to play with.  The pieces are very well weighted and balanced in play.

I agree with what Eyechess stated above. One last thing is the Ultimate V,3 has a proprietary weighting system which makes it virtually impossible for a weight to come loose. In fact, I believe if a weight does come loose Shelby will replace it. 

Also, the weights are not lead. 

Thank you.  I will order both.  I like a fat rook and I do not like the look of the Ultimate Knight, but there has to be something to the set.

Yeah, the knight is my least favorite part of the plastic ultimate set, but all the other pieces are incredible IMO, especially the big head pawns and bishops! 

I have an ultimate v.1 set and the knights are perfect in style for my taste. Maybe v.2 and v.3 have subtly altered the knight?

And yes the bishops are great and also the pawns with their sloping collars: much more attractive than the easily chipped horizontal collars of almost all other sets.

Dennis from Legend Products came up with the concept 1st with his Kings Indian set.

https://www.legendproduct.com/index.html

I do like the UCP v3. I have both the Butterball v2 and Appliance White v3. It is an excellent set to play with. However with a limited amount of color options and the Knight design for me. I can't put this one at the top of my favorite plastic sets. Kings Indian for me is a better set. Though it may not be as heavy as the UCP set. It has enough weight and design to be used for any kind of fast play along with slow play. The Knights are a far superior design than that the of the UCP set. By far superior I mean it looks a lot better than the cartoony seahorse looking Knights. The Kings Indian set has Black, Ivory, Red, and Camel option colors. 5 different set color options compared to one. 

Kings Indian knights look like they've got broken necks or, at least, reined in hard. It makes them look more like a cartoony seahorse . . .

The pawns also look out of proportion and their collars very delicate.

But I agree with you about the colours: the Ultimate Stauntons offer only black and white - not even red.

I "just" want Ultimate Chess Pieces with a german or chavet style knight. A man can dream.

Edit: That said, the knights from the wooden Ultimates are *very* nice to my tastes.

I need to correct TundraMike on something.  All of the modern weighted plastic chess sets I have seen and analyzed have steel weights.   What he said implies others have lead weights...which I think is untrue.

This did get me to look at the page for the Marshal set again on the HoS site.  I did notice something in there that I do take contention with.  It says:

The House of Staunton is proud to offer the Marshall Series Chess set. A full tournament-sized Chess set, it features a 3.75" King with a 1.75" diameter base. The Chess pieces are the heaviest sets on the market with felt base pads on the undersides of the Chessmen.

The Marshal pieces have a median weight of 49.2 ounces.  With the conversion to lbs that makes this set 3.075 lbs.  The Ultimate weighs in at 3.85 lbs.  Make your own conclusions.

But he does make a nice set.  I would like to think that you get a lot more with the Ultimate V.3, but that is for the market to decide.

thanks

Shelby Lohrman

American Chess Equipment

Shelby,

I called in at Chess&Bridge, 44 Baker St, London, sure I would be able to buy one of your Ultimate sets. No luck. When are they coming to England?

jmNZ69,

I have been after Malcolm and Tao to pick these Ultimates up to no avail.  Have a feeling that it needs to be a customer based push to get them to carry them.

As for Amazon UK...talk about interesting.  We have been working with them to try to get product listed over there but due to "regulations" there are some big walls we have to get around.  I do not begrudge the Job of our lady that does all of our Amazon work.  How she is still all there after dealing with all the areas of the world we are in is beyond me.

thanks

Shelby Lohrman

American Chess Equipment

Thanks Shelby. 

You're an excellent corresponder.

Please consider a red set when you get a round tuit . . . I know it's difficult with all the other demands we're putting on you.

But I like red queens . . .

jmNZ69,

The problem is the minimum run for each color change.  We normally have to get 2000-3000 sets per color.  Might be hard to run thru 2K sets in Red...

Shelby Lohrman

American Chess Equipment

Hi I am from India

I am 11 years old

Hi @ShelbyLohrman  I did not know no one is using lead in plastic. I do know it is very common in wood pieces. All chess pieces are classified in the category toys by our system and none of them should contain lead but many of the wooden ones do.

One day they might put a stop to that. I still believe no one else uses your weight system yes?  And you do guarantee that a weight will not come loose in the set yes?

TundraMike,

They stopped using lead as weights in plastic chess pieces mainly due to the CPSC (Consumer Products Safety Commission).  Plastic chess sets are considered toys by them.  Because of this they go thru stringent lead based testing.  The way they test for lead in products is to chop the item in half and swab both pieces.  Even if we used our new weighting system to keep the weight in there they still would not pass the testing.  Since wood sets are not considered "Toys", they do not go thru the lead testing.

As for others using the same weighting system...I would like to say yes...but I have not chopped up all of the sets out there.  I have done a couple of the popular ones, but I hate making blanket statements I cannot back up. 

As for guaranteeing the weights will never loosen up...I will not put a written one out there.  I will replace any Ultimate V.3 set out there with a loose or missing weight out of my commitment to customer service.  We have had the V.3 out there for a while now and I have yet to have anyone ask me for replacements yet.

thanks

Shelby Lohrman

American Chess Equipment