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81 Comments
- CronoLeonhart, on 04/09/2009, -0/+40Theres nothing 'Picasso' about any of those boards.
- factsahoy, on 04/09/2009, -0/+38apostrophe + S = possessive
- Hamakuas, on 04/09/2009, -1/+22Nothing substantial about it, I was thinking these were going to be one off works of art. Instead they range from moderate eye-brow raising to plain stupid.
- 17999, on 04/09/2009, -0/+20"Picasso's" for plural?
/facepalm's - binaryalchemist, on 04/09/2009, -0/+18Um, guys? The "Gangsta-style" *shudder* chess board (#9) is an allusion to South Africa's apartheid era, and its end. The white king appears to be F. W. De Klerk (the last apartheid-period prime minister) flanked by other government apartheid figures. The black pieces are led by Nelson Mandela, with his wife Winnie at his side, flanked by Bishop Tutu bishops etc.
Maybe somebody should tell him? *contemporary political history fail* - borez, on 04/09/2009, -1/+18http://www.nerdcore.de/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/ ...
- mrogi, on 04/09/2009, -2/+17Anybody who understands Chess knows that the simpler the chessboard; the better the chess board.
- ironicsans, on 04/09/2009, -1/+14The Pacifist Chess Set: http://www.ironicsans.com/2006/04/idea_the_pacifis ...
- CsHitman, on 04/09/2009, -1/+14Some of those look pretty impractical...
- frasermoo, on 04/09/2009, -2/+15from submitter
"Playing on the same generic chess board over and over again can get boring rather quickly."
submitter doesn't play chess. - redeyeblog, on 04/09/2009, -0/+11Ummm, the "gangster" chess board... I believe the "pimp" you are referring to is Nelson Mandela
- Julian88888888, on 04/09/2009, -1/+11no one wins in alcoholic chess...
or does everyone win?! - inactive, on 04/09/2009, -3/+12wow that first one is rad, i need one... and the last one, yet another excuse to drink!
- frasermoo, on 04/09/2009, -0/+8don't worry, he has the bases covered. it's like that in IE too,
- Kallius, on 04/09/2009, -0/+7As the article mentions, some chess boards are made so it is difficult to tell the Queen from the Bishop. I lost in a chess tournament precisely for that reason; first time playing a particular board, and the Queen and Bishop were almost identical (likely, the designer had a lack of imagination). Chess tournaments are NOT the place for debuting unique types of chess sets.
- frasermoo, on 04/09/2009, -2/+9this.
a dog chess set. wow.
a picture of dog chess set that is out of focus. wow.
a simpson's chess set.. amazing...
a norwegian chess set in which he makes no mention of the fact that it is the classic Lewis chessmen. lazy.
Lame, bad design, poor execution. No real research of topic.
F is for fail. - skillian, on 04/09/2009, -0/+6And to top it off, the text is cut off at the right hand side in Firefox.
- Kitakaze, on 04/09/2009, -1/+7You're absolutely right. I have no idea why someone who actually plays chess would use that distractive crap. These are chess sets for people who don't play — I mean, what kinda vacuous dingbat comment is this: "Playing on the same generic chess board over and over again can get boring rather quickly."
- zadadka, on 04/09/2009, -2/+8The shot glass set ... perfect for en passent drinking moments !
- pezoamo, on 04/09/2009, -0/+6very cool, but I still want to see an Aliens/Predator chess set
- laserdog, on 04/09/2009, -0/+6Some of those are pretty good, but I think that at least both of these from Make Magazine deserve a place:
Hardware Chess:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/03/hardware_ ...
Coin Chess:
http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol17/?pg=183 - XenoSNK, on 04/09/2009, -3/+8Dugg for the last one being an amazingly awesome alternative to pong.
- p341250n, on 04/09/2009, -3/+8WTF is up with the ALL BLACK GANGSTERS?! That's racialism.
- Xalorous, on 04/09/2009, -0/+5Most tournaments restrict to a specific style with very little variation allowed (Staunton is very popular). Agree that the pieces should be visually distinctive from each other.
Those sets are for casual games or just for conversation pieces, or even just for looks. - Xalorous, on 04/09/2009, -1/+5the other side looked sicilian to me, gangsta's vs gangsters
- mzh4ng17, on 04/09/2009, -2/+6Did anyone else think this was a terribly written article? I want a minute of my life back.
- NathanielJ, on 04/09/2009, -1/+5No, the headline clearly means "The Picasso is of Chess Boards".
- S317, on 04/09/2009, -0/+4I think all of the boards must have belonged to Picasso. There is no other explanation.
- dialector, on 04/09/2009, -0/+3When playing serious chess, just give me simple (and standard) staunton pieces and a plain, high-contrast, board.
Unusual chess sets are only interesting for decoration. - Xalorous, on 04/09/2009, -0/+3If you have to drink the pieces you capture, Pabst guy is gonna drop first. Interesting way of handicapping a chess game.
- Jacomagoo, on 04/09/2009, -0/+3lol at the guy drinking all pabst vs. the guy with a clearly darker ale and two shot of blue stuff....kinda one sided game yes?
- skillian, on 04/09/2009, -0/+3Alien vs. Predator chess, from Gustomucho's comment a few days ago:
http://www.toymania.com/news/messages/0504_avpches ... - frasermoo, on 04/09/2009, -0/+3thank you, i have been looking at it for the past five minutes as something didn't quite 'click'
suddenly the penny dropped! that's Mandela and Tutu!
Unbelievable. this guy is a danger to himself and others. LOL!
I gotta check out his other stuff. - SurrealDream, on 04/09/2009, -0/+2Kaspargasm?
http://tinyurl.com/czxloe - eramos, on 04/09/2009, -0/+2Those are the kitschiest pieces of crap I've ever seen.
- gooddeepbad, on 04/09/2009, -0/+2 i knew this article would be retarded after..."Chess is a timeless game. A game of kings." STFU
- amc1709, on 04/09/2009, -0/+2Some of the boards are set up incorrectly: Numbers 3, 7, 8 (if yellow is assumed to be the white pieces), 9, 10 do not have a white square in the right hand corner of the player. "White on right" is the rhyme I use to make sure it sets up correctly. Just my two cents.
- Jaime2000, on 04/09/2009, -0/+2That's true for serious play, but come on, you can't tell me it wouldn't be fun to pull out one of these boards every now and then, just for ***** and giggles.
- musntSurfatWork, on 04/09/2009, -0/+2seriously, I wasted what could have been my game # 9,763,134,132 of a yahoo 1min speed chess.
- inactive, on 04/09/2009, -0/+2I love ches's
- Liam2012, on 04/09/2009, -0/+2I want the shot glass chess board--Black Russians vs. White Russians, i.e. the Dude vs. the nihilists.
- covertbadger, on 04/09/2009, -0/+1Not true. Any grandmaster will be able to play blindfolded. Any grandmaster will be able to replay hundreds - literally hundreds - of his or her past games move by move in their head. And to claim that a grand master will have their concentration broken by something as trivial as the pieces on the board indicates you know nothing of what it takes to be a master. I've met a couple of candidate masters - I know what they can do.
A grandmaster (or any of the lesser master ranks) does not see the game in terms of individual pieces, they see it in 'chunks' of multiple pieces in a particular configuration. A sequence of moves is seen as a single state transition between chunks. If a master knows he is in the middle of a particular transition, he doesn't need to see the shape of the piece to know where the queen must be placed at this stage in the transition. It's simply an irrelevance.
When you recall a speech or an interesting quotation, you remember the WORDS, not the individual letters. A master does the same thing for chess movements. And when you read a word, you don't need to explicitly read every character individually to know that the second letter in the word 'queen' MUST be a 'u'. It just is. - carbonetc, on 04/09/2009, -0/+1You'd have to play around 20 games on one of these sets to get good with it first, and so would your opponent. To play a good chess game you have to be able to glance at the board and know immediately and peripherally what's where. If you're not used to the pieces you can very easily make a move having not noticed it's a bad one because a piece off to the side was a queen rather than a bishop.
That's why chess tournaments all use the same pieces and roughly the same boards. Someone won't come into a game with a disadvantage because he isn't used to the board. - Suricou, on 04/09/2009, -0/+1I notice that several of the chess boards are rotated by ninety degrees. It's white on right, remember!
- 17999, on 04/09/2009, -0/+1mmm... .nah neither that nor all the picassos that belonged to chess boards.
- DBLR, on 04/09/2009, -0/+1mirror anyone?
- EchoMike, on 04/09/2009, -0/+1I thought it was merely mediocre, but the Digg completely headline ruined it.
- EchoMike, on 04/09/2009, -0/+1Dugg for the Colorful, Norwigian and Ikea chess boards.
Buried for the unnecessary apostrophe in the title.
+3 -1 = dugg. - Yelnik, on 04/09/2009, -0/+1Nope, Kasparov, the chess player...comon people.
- inactive, on 04/09/2009, -0/+1Even if someone is a grand master if the pieces are not visually distinctive that can throw off your concentration. There are not too many chess geniuses these days that play blindfolded, it's a somewhat lost art.
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