Core77

"Preset" Chess, Yea or Nay?

No set-up required

By Rain Noe - May 23, 2016

in Games | Crowdfunding

It's true that I'm no Grandmaster, but when I've played chess with friends, I've never needed the game to start immediately. In fact the few seconds it takes to set up the board is a great time to trash-talk your opponent, explaining that you'll p0wn their pawns and send their knights to the glue factory.

Nevertheless, product designer Andre Persidsky is betting that some chess players are in a hurry. Hence he's designed Preset Chess:

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My first thought was that the board seems rather small—it's 7.5" square—but perhaps it's designed primarily for travel. And while the set has received a lot of online buzz, I can't quite see what the fuss is about, and there are a couple of things that don't add up for me. Number one is when they show the following clip in the video and state "Precision crafted from the highest quality wood materials:"

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Is it me, or is that a chunk of pine?

Second part that doesn't add up is this image below:

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At top right it says "CNC precision routed holder base carved from a single block of hardwood." But you can clearly see by the grain lines, in the image above and the two below, that it's not a single block, but a glue-up.

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In any case, the Kickstarter campaign is offering the sets for $59, and at press time they'd garnered about $5,000 towards a $15,000 goal, with 34 days left to pledge.

What say you: Gimmick, or useful innovation?

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Bobtato Smith

9 years ago

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I'm happy for the makers that they've had a successful Kickstarter, and I'm glad the backers are getting something they like. So we don't necessarily need to hold this up as a design object.

But if we do... well, it wouldn't do well in a crit. It's a travel chess set with an unusually space-inefficient box, where the lightest and least important part (the packaging and the empty space inside) has been replaced with a solid chunk of expensive wood. And the payoff is that you get to set the pieces up at the end of a game instead of at the beginning, provided you're careful when you open the box.

Perhaps it's about the theater of instantly revealing the board all set up and ready to play? I'm not chessy enough to know how much joy one might get out of that.

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Henrik Guderud

9 years ago

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If the holder was equipped with compartments that covered all the routes on the chessboard, it would enable the players to "save" an unfinished game for later.

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Christopher Bray

9 years ago

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Everything is kind of a gimmick.

I respect game designs that set-up and put-away quickly. Both packaging and the game mechanics.

I think the audience for this product are the people that buy fancy chess sets because they like fancy chess sets. That's not a bad thing. Every random new CHAIR some one designs isn't bringing about world peace.

I agree with everyone else that suggested adding some simple marking to show where the pieces go would be nice. Also more hidden magnets. Magnets buried in wood is always fun. It feels magical.

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G. Tee

9 years ago

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So instead of setting the board up in the begging, you need to set it up ahead of time after playing. I say that's pretty Gimmicky. All that wood, prob don't make it light for traveling, or compact to put away.

As for convenience..., you'll need to go an extra step of identifying the pieces and turn upside down to load it...As a suggestion, print some stickers on the bottom of the piece to make it easy to load, but then again that would prob be worn off soon enuf... :P

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- G. Tee
  
  G. Tee
  
  9 years ago
  
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  beginning... I mean. :D
  
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Andre Persidsky

9 years ago

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Rain,

Thanks for your article, but somewhat disappointed in what you wrote:

1) We explicitly state our board is travel sized, so yes, "perhaps it's designed primarily for travel."
2) Our holder is NOT made from Pine, but hardwood. The video clip just illustrates the process.
3) We do NOT glue any part of our holder. We buy genuine hardwood boards, and then have them sized and cut down to single hardwood blocks, CNC machined, then sanded and stained. There is absolutely no gluing on our end of production, and there is no veneer used. Some of the raw hardwood boards may have been joined previously, but it's all hardwood, so don't feel it's inaccurate to say solid hardwood.

Anyway, thanks

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- Rain Noe
  
  Andre Persidsky
  
  9 years ago
  
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  In the last three photos in the entry, we can all see that these are clearly glue-ups; look at the grain! If you cannot visually identify these as glue-ups, there's clearly a larger problem.
  
  Also: You keep saying "hardwood"--what species of wood are you using?
  
  Lastly, if the pieces are made with hardwood, it's probably not a good idea to say "Precision crafted from the highest quality wood materials" while showing a piece of PINE. The "highest quality wood materials" would be what, bubinga, curly maple? Making the "highest quality wood materials" claim will fool other blogs and readers that don't understand materials and processes, but that's not going to fly here.
  
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  - Andre Persidsky
    
    Rain Noe
    
    9 years ago
    
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    We never said our source materials from the wood supplier were not edge joined hardwood panels (as I indicated in my response above). Our end result holder is nevertheless all hardwood material, as opposed to particle board and veneer for example.
    
    We are working and producing with several quality hardwoods including maple, cherry, and walnut.
    
    I hear your point about that particular video, but remember this is a crowdfunding campaign, and as such, we don't necessarily have the budget for the ideal video clip.
    
    Just about everyone that has seen and handled our chess set says it's very nicely made and exudes quality and care. We stand by that.
    
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  - Rain Noe
    
    Rain Noe
    
    9 years ago
    
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    Fair enough. But lack of budget aside, I think you're not doing yourself any favors by making statements in the campaign that don't jive with what we see. It wouldn't have cost you anything to not run that sentence over the shot of pine. I also think it would help you to state that you're using walnut/maple/cherry in your description, as it sounds less fishy than the more generic "hardwood." I raise all of these points because when statements are made that don't jive with the visuals, a red flag goes up and we have to say something. In any case, best of luck with your campaign.
    
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  - Andre Persidsky
    
    Rain Noe
    
    9 years ago
    
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    Thanks for the helpful feedback.
    
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- Eric Strebel
  
  Andre Persidsky
  
  9 years ago
  
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  You just got a lot of free press. BTW. Some laser etching to identify what pieces go where or CNC the icons into the wood, instead of labels. You probably need to secure the board a bit better if it's really for traveling as well. I can think of another material that would be a bit lighter than wood that you could use too. Just basic design stuff to think about. BTW, do a lot of people play chess when they travel?
  
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Jason Pokines

9 years ago

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I think you're right that that's pine, but the video may be from a prototype phase. I don't know my woods well enough to identify the wood in the final product pictures. As for the glue-up vs solid wood; I'd say that's just a result of a non-woodworker not really knowing what he/she/they are saying. I could see myself making the same mistake, trying to refer the fact that it wasn't assembled from multiple worked parts and held together with mechanical fasteners.

As for gimmick or not... eh. It's kind of a gimmick. It's a solution to a minor problem that was made inexpensively. I wouldn't call it gaudy, but I wouldn't call it classy either. I would have liked to see the magnets hidden somehow. Right now it reminds me of those wooden tic-tac-toe blocks with stored marbles as playing pieces. There's usually at least one person selling them at any given craft show.

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