experimental chess set design

I have been working on a new chess set design for a couple of years now, on and off, here and there. I'm not playing chess regularly these days, just studying it from afar. I made this set today in my free time. (Woo-hoo!)

Here's the starting position, followed by a position from the game Lev-Rechlis, Tel Aviv, 1995. Pieces are wood, spray painted. The board is your standard roll-em-up chess board.

These are from my phone camera, taken in kind of dim light. Sorry about that.

I don't mean to be cruel, but why?

why do anything?

There are some similarities between your and my design of a few years ago.

Mine is symmetrical, unlike the typical 2D pieces that can be upside down for one player. I was hoping this would be an improvement.

I never used it enough to acquire that instant piece recognition that we all have with standard 2D and 3D pieces, but it is still an attractive and practical set. (Inked suede on onyx and rose quartz disks.)

Hi goldendog.

Thanks for posting. Any comment on the meanings of the symbols that you've selected to represent the various pieces?

No meaning apart from the shapes tending to suggest the geometry of each piece's moves, like your design.

Hi BomTrown (Tom Brown?) ...

Interesting to see the set you made. Not sure how easy it would be to play with in practice, which made me think that small discs (such as those by goldendog), with impressions such as those found on our now ubiquitous "digital sets" would be handy (e.g. the crown for the queen; the horse's head for the knight, etc). I could even see that those more familiar with playing online, as opposed to a regular set, would find it quite easy to get used to.

Anyway, looks like you had fun making it! Thanks for the pictures.

I could see nice wooden disks (using the usual woods we are accustomed to as players), weighted, with the conventional 2D designs lasered into the tops.

Disks big enough for the standard 2-1/4" boards even.

Not so good for blitz but otherwise it sounds nifty.

Yes, I guess I meant circular discs of some kind, much like yours, rather than the same material, but yes, wooden discs would be good. A fun project for someone!

I'm not a huge fan of the similarity of the bishops and rooks. Something to suggest that the rook is a "heavier" peice would have been nice. Otherwise it is a pretty nice set. Abstract yet rather easy to distiguish. A tough combo that you pulled off well.

Thunk different. I likes it.

 Thanks. It's something to play around with. The standard (Staunton) pieces don't really tell the beginner how they move, so I thought, why not make some pieces that look like how they move.

 Thanks. Ohh ok. I see that now after closer inspection.

The similarities between the two sets are actually quite striking.  Not that there's a lot of room for significant variability once the theme's been realized, but interesting that you both independently came up with the idea.

Incidentally, the shapes of the rook and the bishop, and that of the queen (being the combination of the rook and the bishop) are eerily reminiscent of the relationship between St. Andrew's and St. Patrick's Crosses, St. George's Cross and the Union Jack.

bomtrown,

I like your set but ideally, I think it would look better if the king was larger... at least the size of the queen... and the bishops and knights a tad smaller.

:)

I think this goes in the wrong direction. I hate 2D representations, I think they make play much more difficult, and the different height of the Staunton pieces is really helpful in pattern recognition. (Note, however, that the heights do not correspond to piece value; Rooks are smaller than Bishops or Knights. The heights are chosen for the aesthetic look of the initial position.)

In Shogi (Japanese Chess) there is just the opposite problem: the Asian variants are traditionally played with 2D pieces with Chinese (kanji) characters on them. There is a so-called westernized Shogi representation that replaces the kanji by a drawing of how the piece moves (similar to what you do here). In practice this is just as awful.

In Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) the need to use 2D pieces is even less than in Shogi (as peieces don't need to change sides there). So I designed my own Stounton-like Cannon pieces there:

Shouldn't the pawns be shaped like this?    Y

No, more like an arrow pointing downwards (towards the player) than a Y.