Last night I went into my personal office area to choose a Chess set, board and clock combination to use this coming Monday night for the last round of our club's Midsummer Knight's Dream tournament which is G/80, d/5.

I decided I wanted to use my Fischer-Spassky set from The House of Staunton.  I do own both the Ebonized and Golden Rosewood versions of this set.

I thought that I would use the Ebonized version.  I then pulled out my wood, folding boards because I didn't feel like lugging the bigger full boards and bags.

I put that Ebonized set on the HoS Palisander folding board.  And while the black and boxwood set looked alright on the dark chocolate color of the Palisander, it just didn't seem to click for me.

I then pulled out the Golden Rosewood set and ended up with it looking really nice on my HoS folding, Maple and Mahogany board, where the border of the board is the lighter Maple.  That set looks fabulous on that board and I'll be taking pictures of the setup Monday night and posting them on this forum.

Today I was driving to an office wondering just what board those Ebonized pieces would look best on.  That's why I'm asking for opinions.

Of course I think Green and Buff boards would work just fine.  I'll have to take or find some pictures when I get home.

And I have a few wood boards where the squares are dyed green.  I bet the black will look fine on those.

But, what kind of natural wood colors do you think will work best?

Definitely green

I would say pretty much anything EXCEPT for Ebony and Walnut.  Neither seems to provide enough contrast to make the black pieces "stand out" and leave a distinct silouette.

This might also apply to Wenge, but I've never owned a board in that wood so I don't know for certain.

To be honest, I have no idea what's with the obsession with green square chessboards in some areas of the world (it seems to be mainly an American thing from what I can tell).

Around where I live (central Europe) virtually no chess shop sells green chessboards (not even vinyl ones, let alone wooden ones), because probably nobody would buy them. It's all mainly walnut/maple or similar (dark squares are mostly brown, sometimes mahogany or black-ish wenge, while light squares are buff, golden-yellow, or cream-white). Green seems to be rather unfitting and ruining the chess aesthetics (at least that appears to be a consensus around here, which I personally happen to share by all means).

Green and red are very old, traditional chess colors.  Many Ivory chess sets were dyed red or green in the 19th century.  I disagree that Green destroys Chess aesthetics, it's just different than we are accustomed to in our day and age.

Red, yes, it was used quite a lot (especially for the chessmen instead of black, for instance we had a red rather than a black queen in Lewis Carroll's "Trough the Looking Glass"), mostly in the latter part of the 19th century. As for green, well, I just looked through the whole "Master Pieces" book by Gareth Williams and there were just two green chessmen sets pictured (and they were rather historic and/or exotic), and no green boards at all.

As far as I know, the green-square vinyl boards are mostly an American thing, they indeed seem very dominant in USCF tourneys. But in Europe, virtually nobody uses green-square boards, as mentioned above chessboards here are almost exclusively oriented around the brown-buff color scheme.

The green, especially in the vinyl boards does look to be quite American.

As was explained to me when I first came into organized Chess, the green and buff are easier on the eyes and vision, especially in a longer game.

I believe that it is not a coincidence that Plastic Chess pieces also have been very prevalent in America.  This gives us the "standard" of Black for the dark pieces and a natural for the light pieces with the green and buff board.

From what I have seen, most of the European sets have been and continue to be wood.  This makes much more sense that a wood colored board would go along and be used.

In my opinion there is no correct or incorrect color scheme, except ones that do not look acceptable to the eye.

I have found that a lot of Walnut and Rosewood (from the ligher Sheesham all the way to the darkest regular or Cardinal Rosewood) does look very nice on the green square boards. To wit this picture of a Piatigorsky Cup set from Official Staunton on a green dyed Sycamore and Bird's Eye Maple board:

The fact is that we must have contrast between the pieces and the board to better distinguish what pieces are on what squares, quickly.  Having the dark pieces being the same color as the dark squares is not desirable in any set up.

So, what color boards do you find look best with pieces that have black for the dark ones?

>From what I have seen, most of the European sets have been and continue to be wood.

Wood equipment indeed tends to be used more often in tournaments in Europe than it is the case in America, but you'll also find foldable cardboard boards, and sometimes plastic/vinyl ones as well - still, they almost always fit the brown/buff color scheme. I think that, to give an example, the design of the DGT (a Dutch company) budget starter set is quite indicative of this - the set has plastic pieces and a foldable cardboard chessboard, but the latter is styled so as to imitate wood as much as possible (this thread reviewing the set has many pictures: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/dgt-red-box-plastic-set). I think that there's a strong attachment to natural wood aesthetics in European chess, and that it's largely what makes boards with square colors such as green much unpopular there.

>The fact is that we must have contrast between the pieces and the board to better distinguish what pieces are on what squares, quickly.  Having the dark pieces being the same color as the dark squares is not desirable in any set up.

Sure, I do acknowledge this fact very much (incidentally, just lately I've  been complaining about precisely this characteristic of a poor set in post #7 of this thread: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/chess-games-in-tv-show-mr-robot). As a matter of fact, poor pieces/squares contrast seems to be the #1 flaw which disqualifies the overwhelming majority of the cheaper mass-produced sets (though somewhat closely followed by poor matching of piece/square size, inadequate ratios of piece height/base diameter etc., and generally unsatisfying design).

>So, what color boards do you find look best with pieces that have black for the dark ones?

In my opinion, brown seems optimal provided it's not too dark. As discussed above, that's what you'll find in Europe almost exclusively, whether the board is wood, plastic, or cardboard. Anyway, ebonized (i.e. literally black) pieces seem to have come back in style only in recent years, and it's quite an improvement in itself (as before it was brown pieces on brown squares for many, many years). The electronic boards used in high-profile tournaments also exclusively fit the brown-buff scheme (though their monopolist manufacturer being a European company surely has an influence on this, see above).

A recommendation from "Chess for Success" by Maurice Ashley was for high contrast between the pieces and medium to low contrast between the squares.  As an ebonized set already provides the high contrast between pieces,  I chose a premium vinyl board from The Chess Store with cream and dark brown squares.  For my wooden board,  I liked the look of the FIDE championship board so I bought a Rechapados Ferrer mahogany and maple board so the darker squares would emulate the rosewood of the actual FIDE set.  My black ebonized German Knight pieces still show good contrast against the mahogany squares without getting lost or camouflaged in a sea of matching wood tones.  My plastic set in black and natural also works well with both boards.   It is very unlikely that I will ever own a board with green squares.

My House of Staunton set sits on a Dreuke chessboard in which the dark squares are probably walnut and the light squares are probably aspen.  This board wasn't even expensive (I mean, it was $100 or so, but that isn't much for a pretty nice piece of quality woodwork).  It is one of the best-made things I've ever owned, seemingly from another era, with squares that appear to be solid blocks going all the way through, rather than inlays, and the back of the board is not felted but is just the other side of the same wood blocks at the front, and finished just as well as the front too.

This is one of the rare products that I ever bought where I thought "they could sell this for more."

Whether that would be best for you I'm not sure, but I think it looks great.

I feel like blue works really nicely.  I prefer it to green, though green is ok, too.

Red is another favorite of mine.

I like the combination of walnut and maple 

I vote walnut and maple also.

My favorite study set is a Jaques replica black/natural 3 3/4" x 1 1/2" king on a 2" David Levy 'Hardwood Creations' board. 

I've treated this board with camellia oil to preserve and slightly darken it.

As important as the colors is the lighting.  Soft, indirect, low color temperature light is the only way to go.  Intensity is a matter of mood and personal preference.

A comfy chair is also essential. 

I find a glass of scotch at about move 20 greatly inspires my endgame play. "Blackburne's Black Death" being scarce in these parts, I usually settle for Laphroaig.

When I was a kid, we played using the goofy green boards and the el cheapo plastic pieces under flourescent light on flimsy folding tables sitting on hard seat wooden folding chairs.  I'd last 5 minutes at that now.  We also drank nothing but 7-Up and ate Cheetoes so the pieces were always orange.

My chess is no better, bit I've improved the environmental aesthetics considerably.

As a Dodger fan, all my sets are blue and white squares.

bananamoon, is that the HOS Championship Series? It looks awesome!

Dodger Blue.  Reserved for Linda Ronstadt.

Anyone old enough to remember that?

Hint:  World Series 1977.

for wooden boards, the Walnut on Drueke boards

Nope .... Tournament series from Chess Bazaar.

http://www.chessbazaar.com/tournament-series-staunton-chess-pieces-with-german-knight-in-stained-dyed-box-wood-3-7-king.html

Right... they look quite similar except for the bishops.

Sporting green for the chess machine!

Have used many board colors but finally settled on green for most chess pieces - especially rosewood and ebony!  Green boards are particularly beautiful with these woods and easy on the eyes for long sessions playing, solving studies or reviewing master games.  Actually prefer a simple green and buff vinyl roll up to let the pieces loose on, something about the easy elegance of rosewood or ebony pieces on these green boards says to me:  ok, lets get to work.   Last time set up some pieces on my mahogany n maple board simply gathered them back up put the board away and shook out the sport GREEN - the pieces seeming to collectively take a sigh of relief and look up at me as if to say:  what were you thinking?