Chess Sets | Chess Sales | Chess Design

A fantastic chess set in their decorative range - the Gods of Mythology set of chess pieces has stolen the focus for potential chess buyers. The above picture shows why. The excellent photography shows a certain appeal to the males, but the chap is pretty good looking too - right? All in all, a great set to move about on the board, and for this reason, the set has been a popular purchase from the Hull offices of this world leader in themed chess. The Ancient Greek Gods are well represented and portrayed in this impressive chess set design. Zeus is the King, Aphrodite the Queen and Pan is the Pawn. This is a consistently popular set which regularly features in our stockists collections world wide and is often used as background decor in many TV shows and movies. See the RSS feed here. The site was designed by ComputeThat Web Design.

Leaders in decorative chess sets - SAC have completely overhauled their web site and their businesss! They now stock more than just their superb theme chess range and stock staunton chess, travel chess and even chess computers. SAC is the brand that is more recognised in the world than any other decorative chess name. For some decades - if any consumer wanted a Battle of Waterloo, or an Isle of Lewis, and many others - the SAC brand has offered the finest - an excellent finish, and excellent standard of quality. They’ve taken their brand to a higher level in offering chess goods that are not just in the theme genre.

The SAC brand is now run by The Traditional Games Company based in Kingston upon Hull in Yorkshire, England. Having gone through and succeeded in the turmoil of manufacture base that every English manufacturing company has wrestled with, Traditional Games have emerged as a lasting and valuable company through the excellence of their product. What better than to extend the brand to a wider set of products?

Our favourite chess store has now started stocking the whole range of chess software titles. With Fritz 11 now available and being the main chess software item in demand in the chess community, the whole sector is alight with sales expectation. The whole genre of chess software is a sector that is benefitting from the gradual demise of the stand-alone chess computer, not through an abscence of demand but through the miserable build quality and worse quality control of the main company manufacturing such products - Novag. Chessbase is ready to take up the demand with products that are superb and fully functional. Fritz and Shredder are examples of the best of breed. There are also many products that even fit on the growing arena of pocket PC computing.

In Web 2.0 networking - the site Linked-in is a useful SEO resource for outgoing links without the nofollow tag being used and for keeping a tab on resources for your organisation or your personal life. The site allows a typical facebook style accomodation of web resources throughout the web and in real life - we’ve found it useful to our company for keeping track of who’s who. We are also looking at it as a possible CRM application. The site is one of a growing offering by companies who monetise through adsense and which provide excellent resource for small companies competing for exposure to customers. Another is eSnips and Squidoo which offer sites/pages hosted with them on different C-Class IP addresses. The key on this genre of page hosting is to create a page but not to just leave it as if people will magically find it. Even ‘linked in’ has to be ‘linked to’ - otherwise it’s unlikely to be indexed by Google or the other SE’s. The so-called parasite hosting of many black hat SEO practicioners generally fails in leverage because of this factor - all it leaves is orphaned pages by the thousands.

The Novag Star Rub is a superb example of electronic chess. Whilst the Excalibur NY22 has beaten most of it’s rivals into a cocked hat with functionality, the Ruby still wins through with it’s slimline shape and it’s well thought out graphics. The model is one of the best of Novags lines and wins over it’s rivals through size and sophistication - many claim it still to be the best examples of electronic chess available.
Sadly the days of the Ruby appear numbered, unless it’s parent redesigns elements of the model to voefcome the restrictions of the new RoHS regulations. Pronounced “Ross” or “Rohas”, RoHS is a European Directive regarding ‘Restriction of Hazardous Substances’. It prevents new electrical and electronic equipment containing more than agreed levels of hazardous substance from coming onto the market. So far (Feb 2008) the Ruby is the only member of Novag’s family that has failed the regulation, so no new units can be manufactured until the company can demonstrate compliance. Come on Novag.

This store feed for chess computers, electronic chess from a UK chess retailer is an example of the power of RSS feeds from search engine optimisation companies such as TurnerDow.com in an increasingly competitive online space. As consumers become more and more savvy with respect to purchasing online, taking advantage of alternative, free means of marketing products becomes essential for survival. An online existence is expensive, much more so than for brick and mortar stores in the high street. Free shopping feeds clearly help that battle greatly.

A truly amazing chess sets store in the US is called ChessBaron USA, one of the family of stores owned by Baron Turner and Jonathan Stefanczyk. They have over 300 different kinds of chess sets with traditional, themes and unusual categories. We’ve never seen such great designs with a strong staunton flavor but a flair of design that sets the store apart from others. Check it out! Try the luxury chess sets section where the range is particularly strong, or if budget is an issue then the best value section appears to be the mid price category - there are many triple weighted chess sets with double queens, ebony or bud rosewood sets. A very cool site.

As seen in pages such as this one on chess computer intelligence, the science of chess computing is alive and kicking at Cambridge University. Chess sets have the social edge but chess computers have the scientific community more engaged. The number of departments in universities across the world engaged in using chess for the furtherance and testing of computing power and computing technology is significant. Chess has always been a test bed for computer advance and is so at Cambridge. Professor Briscoe is particularly involved in computer intelligence at the university, and as the most prominent centre of higher education in the country if not in the world is at the forefront of the discipline. Professor Briscoe is a huge chess enthusiast.

Turnaound finance, company rescue. With worsening trade conditions in Europe and the USA - more and more companies are looking at difficulties through financial difficulty. Companies that help failing companies are growing in importance and Beer and Young are the leaders in that field. Rather than just encourage controlled failure in suffeering companies, Beer and Young company rescue services are positive in restructuring for a continued healthy future, helping not just with the finances needed for survival but also in management restructure through a skilled panel of experts.
 

Growingly in chess circles, Electronic chess as an industry is a critical part of chess retailing, and a new blog at www.chess-computers.co.uk does a great job of showing how it works - especially in the UK. There’s a post on who dominates chess computer sales in the country and who they come from. It has a post on the best suppliers and a much needed discussion on which is the best top end chess computer out of the Excalibur Grandmaster and the Novag Citrine. We like the opinion on Saitek’s choice to delist their best product - the Expert, and agree with the comments on the quality finish of the Citrine. Thumbs up guys! More of the same - it’s great reading.

Wow! As Excalibur were unresponsive to our demands for more stock of the 404-D talking touch chess computer - what a result - a new chess computer that beats it’s competitors into first place several times over. The new handheld makes the most of their borrowed ‘New York Times’ brand phrase and includes a backlight along with their already enhanced LCD graphics. The NY22 has been a handheld in the past with the NYT name, but what a great way to use the NYT cache and the head start they had with the 404-D! Well done Excalibur - and may this lead to enhanced customer (aka retailer) relations to match the enhanced chess computer model!

The need for a professional freelance illustrator have not dissipated with the growth of the web. Richard Deverell such a craftsman who does a great job of conveying through his site the skill of his trade. Whilst cartoons in the form of jpg’s or such can be obtained from various sources accross the web - where uniqueness is desirable, or personal touches needed, a peson to do the job with his or her own hand is needed. It also avoids the problems of intellectual copyright which is a growing issue in the new wired world.

Richard has done work for a number of international clients, illustrated many books - childrens and other types and has become recognised for a certain style of cartoon illustration. If you want to get a unique touch to your business logo, business card or other stationery then this site will be worth a visit.

In the shrouded world of search engine optimisation, there is now a specialist in optimising websites for favourable placement within search engine results pages. This is obviously a recipe for conflicts of interest, but there is enough variance in the genre to be able to optimise for several different phrases of no interest to other engaged chess parties.

As the web has matured - every genre has become quickly clogged with hundreds of thousands of sites with fierce competition. Indeed, in terms of sales, the difference between success and failure is often determined with good ranking in the SERPS. Using such services may make a huge difference in traffic.

Hey - at last - two blogs dedicated to Chess Computers and chess clocks - the site chesscomputer.co.uk and chessclock.co.uk. In retail terms - for any chess retail site, chess computers have become a major factor in sales - particularly at Christmas - they appear to be a great pressy. The major there manufacturers are Saitek, Excalibur and Novag - all produce models that are strong in their software and have many useful features (see this pick of the best at Squidoo chess computers). The other blog deals with chess timers, chess clocks are much lower in volume but are in steady demand.

Chess is said to be one of the oldest games of skill known to man. Some historians claim that the history and origin of chess can be traced down to as early as the 2nd century, and its country of origin to be China. In China, at that time people were playing a game very similar to chess called Xiangqi. Yet others think that chess (played very similar to what we know today) originated in India around 6th century where it was played as Chataranga (in Sanskrit).

Mention about the game was found at the same time in Persia where it was known by the name of Shatranj (very similar to the Indian name, Chataranga). Documented evidence of the game is found around the 7th century where there is clear mention about the description of the chess pieces – though not exactly as we know them today. First the game spread across Asia; in Japan it was called Shogi, in China Xiangqi, and in Persia Shatranj.

In the mid 9th century the chess game navigated to Europe, most like through invasions by Persian and other Moslem armies. There the name of the chess had been altered to Shah (King in Persian) alluding to the game rules, as we know them today. By 10th century the game of chess was well known all over Europe.

Read More…..

Two sites that promote chess for schools and chess for kids are these on Geocities that have serious information - substantial comment and authority but presented in the form of humour. As an example for schools: “The last five decades has yielded scientific research into the benefits of chess for children and has been dramatically documented and presented to school commitees and groups globally.” Heringer talks about his experience with his son who had great difficulty reading. Chess analysis helped his son distinguish elements of words such that reading skill followed.

In the chess for kids site - the site highlights how psychologist Adrian de Groot demonstrated that the success factor for chess Grandmasters was to recognise ‘chunks’ of information - positions on the board that could be assimilated in just 5 seconds. This leads to the concept of using chess as a mental development tool.

Chess puzzles are becoming more and more popular among chess players and starters for enhancing their chess playing skills.
This site has a detailed page on Chess Puzzles which will surely enhance your chess playing abilities.

There are 3 variations of chess puzzles today.

• Orthodox and Tactical Chess Puzzles
• Heterodox Chess Puzzles
• Chess Miner Chess Puzzles

Orthodox and tactical chess puzzles are closely mimic a traditional chess game and on many levels are best designed to develop an individual’s abilities with traditional and conventional chess play.

Heterodox chess puzzles invoke conditions that are not possible in traditional chess play. For example, with these types of chess puzzles a player could have multiple kings on his or her side of the board.

Finally, with chess miner chess puzzles a person is left to determine where missing chess pieces are located based on information provided pertaining to chess pieces that actually are visibly present and the location of those chess pieces.

This example can be seen at GPS chess sets. In chess sales - it’s a great idea to use whatever free exposure anyone will provide - especially if the ‘anyone’ is Google. What started as Froogle became Google Base and now has the less nerdy title Google Product Base, or GPS. Sounds like some new cell-phone calling system huh?

Though GPS is a boon for listing your products - it does tend to get lost in the maze of products available. One or two companies are now emerging to create an optimised XML product feed to prioritise your products - it works wonders and we’ve already had sales and loads of extra exposure. Not easy though and needs some heavy technical know-how especially of XML. No pain, no gain huh?

Take for example this site for chess computer listings in squidoo, or this eSnips page on chess computers and their electronic merits by a chess retailer. How do they affect sales? How does Web 2.0 affect sales of chess through the web? Briefly Web 2.0 refers to the democratisation of the internet, where instead of relying on the judgment of search engines to bring results to us - we rely instead on the collective judgment of other visitors/customers to determine the worth of a site. This is accomplished by such sites as del.icio.us, digg and squidoo to vote for us on the worth of web sites.

The trouble is - no-one really knows the actual results, unless we ask chess customer how they found us. This is sometimes possible and often not. But it is wise to observe what internet visionaries tell us, whilst we refuse to put all our eggs in one basket - the fact is that the web is developing at such a pace that it’s impossible for anyone to say what shape eCommerce is really going to resemble months, let alone years from now. Web 2.0 however has everyone in agreement, the collective votes of ‘the people’ are a better indication of a sites worth than the warring search engine monarchies.

As one of the manufacturing leaders of electronic chess computers, the novag company have done a superb job of this machine. Concentrating on the software, they have made a very strong chess engine for this price level. The computer can connect to a PC for enhanced visualisation and development. It has a database built in that has a 8,900 opening book. It has a 16MHz RISC processor and in summary is the most competitive chess computer in this price range.
The Obsidian playing surface is 9 inches square. It has a carry case for the pieces and the electronic board, and the pieces are felt bottomed and made in genuine sheesham wood. In the world of game computers, the Obsidian chess computer is outstanding!

The Citrine is now foremost Chess Computer for all singing, all dancing electronic chess. Man, this thing aint cheap - but it justifies it’s price tag by functionality that hasn’t been seen since the partial retirement of Kasparov beater Big Blue itself.
Chess computers have come a long way from the old ‘press sensory, press harder, now still harder’ - computers of yester-year. This Novag citrine is the bee’s knees, the Queen’s knickers and the dog’s bollocks all rolled up into one. I particulalrly like the way that when I lose it doesn’t actually laugh in my face even if I know that the silicon zeros and ones have a secret smirk becaue of my stoopid move. Oh well! It will also tutor me to be able to beat my 6 yr old whilst simultaneously allowing me to play with a human opponent on what is a very nice, fully wooden cabinet with the electronics buried inside. Neat! Novag have really done something with this computer. Maybe I can make a living on the chess circuit after all.

Have you visited this great chess forum yet? It’s a perfect place to whine about those awful chess retailers or something else about the game, questions (why does the horsey have to move in that awkward way?), opinions, etc. Maybe you have a question about the origin of the game, or want to find out where to buy chess computers, why Kasparov has quit chess - anything! In particular there is a great section on all kinds of chess articles - also a section on tips and strategy. We love the site!

This was posted (by me) on Matt Cutts site (Goolges face to the world) - I want to know that someone from Google knows about this.
Has anyone noticed that with the browser ie7 the google search facility (generally top right) only has searches through Google.com if Google are chosen for searching the web? So if you’re in Canada, or the UK, the search results are sub-optimal? If this becomes the default search mechanism (as it is doing) users aren’t getting good results and will stray from Google - as will be welcomed from Microsoft - the developers of ie7.
You can change to a ‘national’ Google as the choice - but man! You have to jump through some hoops - and even then I can’t get it to persist! 99% of users aren’t going to bother - they’ll just go to Yahoo or MSN instead.
How does this affect chess sales? In the UK, top results are not replicated through this new ie7 search. Worse, in France, Canada, etc. the results are completely skewed for chess sales through searched such as ‘chess sets’.
Microsoft always has to play dirty!

Good reason to run to a website search engine optimisation company - ranking in the organics is somewhat precarious whilst Google is still in adolescance. Spreading the risk of being pulled from the organic rankings - many eCommerce sites including chess sales sites have tried to spread the net for customers in order to become reliable, robust and here for the long term. With Google and other search engines eager to show appropriate results, their algorithms change and many good sites can unwittingly become casualties, meaning their sales, i.e. ‘chess sales’ suffer. If the newly confident eCom sites have taken on staff who are in turn reliant on income from the new-ish website, a pull from the rankings can be a living death. Hence companies are turning to other streams of attracting themelves to people who want to buy chess sets, other chess hobyist sites, online malls and other mainline directories with good traffic. The whole internet sales ‘thing’ is taking the world by storm, but what is overlooked is a site’s persistant precarious state of organic rankings - and who can make a good living on PPC?

Short of finding yourself in an orange jump suit and the wrong side of a fence with ‘Guantanamo’ on the sign, one of the worst experiences to have is waking up one day to find that your high ranking chess site ‘ain’t high ranking no more’. To save the home and some standard of living for yourself and family, and that of any staff, the wise entrepeneur will have spread the chess sales net so that along with enhanced adwords, the sales can keep coming in.

Until we get a more stable and reliable set of search results. Until we get a less adolescent search engine industry.

What an unusual chess design - the Japanese Chess Set! Who would ever buy such a thing - it’s ugly, it’s weird, it’s strange,… it’s an affront!,… it’s… it’s wonderful! It’s so different, so unusual…! I must have one! It’s pawns are all little Buddha’s  - each giving their little pieces of insight and wisdom on the current position of the battle. That’s all very well, as long as they all agree huh? But what a statement! And in a market of many theme chess sets - what an unusual example, a gift with oneupmanship established!

In a genre occupied by historical battles and stereotyped theme chess designs, the Japanese Chess Set is a breath of fresh air. Can’t help but see as much Chinese influence in the chess design as Japanese - but hey! they don’t come to me for advice! They could have called it the Chinese-Japanese theme chess set. They could have had Chinese on one side and Japanese on the other! Maybe a little too touchy? Or not enough? It could have been Iran and Japan.

The green color is very obvious on the dark side (not pictured above - click through to the full product) - what does this signify? Not a clue, but can’t resist the ‘Grasshopper’ reference from the old TV series. Ya gotta like green to like this set - the dark side is dark green. And not so dark! But - I love it - and it’s a great gift for someone who likes green, Japan, China and little Buddha’s all giving their two-penneth worth of wisdom and squabbling during the game!

Introduction
For good quality chess pieces the woods used are Ebony, Bud Rosewood, Redwood and Rosewood. For lesser quality but still excellent chess pieces, the wood used is Boxwood and Sheesham. For cheap chess pieces the wood is generally not genuine, but is reconstituted wood. Ebony chess pieces, bud rosewood chess pieces, redwood chess pieces are woods used for luxury chess sets available today.

Ebony The ebony tree. The traditional luxury wood preferred in many sets, ebony chess pieces are always in demand. The wood is not black as the pieces suggest, rather has black streaks. A chemical process makes the wood used in chess pieces design solid black. Ebony chess boards give a better idea of the coloring of the wood, the squeares are generally brown with black streaks. The wood is hard and although difficult to work, results in a robust, hard wearing chess piece.

Bud Rosewood Base of the rosewood tree. Although the traditional wood is Ebony, Bud Rosewood has steadily grown in preference for luxury chess sets due to the richer coloring of the pieces with Bud Rosewood. Also called Red Rosewood (but not Redwood), this wood is part of the rosewood tree. The least plentiful part of the tree is the base close to the root. This is Bud Rosewood, and is the part that has the richer coloring potential and is now prized for chess piece production. Bud Rosewood has a minor issue of being less hard wearing, less robust and more brittle than normal rosewood and ebony. Customers often prefer bud rosewood for it’s very rich appearance and accept it’s durability downside. The pieces are very much in demand.

Redwood The Californian redwood tree. The rarest of woods used in wooden chess piece designs. Redwood is similar to bud rosewood other than an extra redness in coloring. This is seen particularly in chess boards, wehere the redness is very obvious and very attractive. See pictures below. Redwood is more durable than bud rosewood and has the coloring sought after in quality chess pieces. The customer just needs to like the reddish color - some do, some dont.

Rosewood Mid part of the rosewood tree. Rosewood is the wood used for the majority of medium quality chess pieces. The grain is oftem highly polished and the wood is very suitable for many uses other than chess pieces (furniture for example). The wood has a good solid density and is generally enhanced by auxiliary weighting. The finished product is robust and hard wearing (though not so much as Ebony). It may be occasionally preferred over it’s rarer sibling - Bud Rosewood, because of it’s harder wearing properties. A good solid wood that mixes the attraction of wood grain, appearance and durability with the slight disadvantage of not such rich coloring as bud rosewood. See the pictures below.

Sheesham Wood The upper part and branches of the sheesham tree. Sheesham is the most misunderstood of woods used in chess piece design, generally due to the fact that it is also known by two other misleading names: Indian Rosewood and Golden Rosewood. The wood is good quality and good for chess piece design. It doesn’t have the same coloring potential as either rosewood or bud rosewood, but it does have good intrinsic density and is easy to work with and robust. The synonyms as above mean that often retailers drop the ‘Indian’ or ‘Golden’ qualifier in the name resulting in just ‘Rosewood’, which is misleading.

Boxwood The boxwood tree. The name belies the quality. The vast majority of lighter sides of chess sets are made from boxwood, whether luxury chess pieces or cheaper, lower-to-medium quality chess sets. The wood has to dry thoroughly (as long as 15 years is required for best drying), so the wood is fairly expensive and valued for chess piece production. Boxwood is often ebonized, or made black, to form a less expensive chess set that has the appearance of ebony. This is a common practice and not at all underhand (as long as they are declared as ‘ebonized’ of course) - indeed some even prefer the aged effect of ebonized, as parts of the wood gets a little lighter. The result is a boxwood chess set for both sides with one of the sides blackened, or ebonized.

Some Examples - click to see the full product…

Sheesham/Boxwood

Rosewood

Bud Rosewood

Ebony

Redwood (Board Too)

Conclusion
The best woods are Ebony, Bud Rosewood, and Redwood. Next in the preferred order is sheesham and boxwood, although boxwood is used in light side luxury chess manufacture too. Cheaper wooden chess sets are made from reconstituted woods. Many chess products imported from China have this lower quality of wood, the type of chess sets generally available in large stores and low quality web sites. For good, enduring chess sets, look for pieces and boards made from sheesham wood or better.

Have you noticed these one page chess stores such as the UK Chess Store ChessBaron? Well, not actually one-page. But through RSS feeds all the store’s products are displayed on one page, so where the feed occurs it’s just one page. You then visit the chess store through one of the many hyperlinks available in the feed. Many feed web sites now display stores like this across many industries (i.e. not just chess). Don’t know what I’m talking about? Wanna see some examples besides the one above?

Try the US chess store ChessBaron - their one-pager is displayed in many feeds, and one example is here at the Improve Chess site. The UK ChessBaron is a little bigger because of the larger inventory the UK has. This UK chess store is probably the largest in the UK, probably Europe too - the range is very large. The pages for these chess store feeds take a while to load because thumbnails of their entire product catelog have to load, but the results are microcosm of the stores themselves in places other than the actual web address of the store. Cool huh?

 I’ve noticed that this concept has started to be exploited by companies selling other items too (well, let’s face it, chess aint gonna be first!), and where items can be added to the shopping cart too - something that would be a significant improvement to a simple RSS feed. Currently these one-page displays are just a glimpse of the site/store itself. You can’t buy from the store at the place the feed is shown, nor can you see contact details, where the store is, and what the returns policy (for example) is. You have to go to the original site for that. But the one-page chess store displays (such as the examples above) all the products retrieved from the store’s database, as a microcosm to get an idea of the quality of the goods. I wonder if the phenomenon will last? It’ll last as long as RSS lasts!

Imagine you are a chess manufacturer. Constrained by the staunton genre, how do you come up with designs that are significantly different yet in the staunton camp? The designer of the Ultimate chess set (also known as the Napolean) came up with it - and many more designs besides - flair, art, maybe a touch of genius.

Well, ya either love it or hate it. I love it. But it’s no can of beans, designed to neither offend nor excite anyone. The bold lines are so striking, and, well, bold. The first time I held the Ultimate in my hand was the time I fell in love with it. Since then I’ve tried again and again to get photographs that reflect it’s majesty without success. It’s 6″ King will put many off, European homes aren’t as big on average as their North American counterparts, and an Ultimate chess set with a 6″ King takes up some significant room. But once holding it, feeling the weight and seeing in real life the rustic carvings making up it’s features, I just fell in love with the chess set. Difficult to really find a reason, difficult to quantify. Like falling in love with a person, you might find metrics of a kind, but there’s a bonding of souls and a feeling in the heart that is hard to express. The Ultimate had this very effect on me. The other pieces of the set are great too, but obviously in this chess set more than most, the knight is the flagship. If you love the knight the rest of the pieces won’t offend you, indeed they compliment the Knight.

Which wood? The Ultimate Chess Set comes in Ebony or Bud Rosewood, both are great woods for this set and both enhance the lines of the chess set perfectly. For me, although normally a Bud Rosewood afficiando, the Ebony really comes out better and really excels. The size of the piece is such that the black wood shows to effect the carving wonderfully. Various angles, shapes and depths result in shades of black I never would have thought of - but the bud is great too.

The Ultimate Knight chess set - well named, well designed with a touch of genius by the manufacturers, Ultimate in name, ultimate in nature.

As a chess set online retailer - what does one do when competitors get closer and closer to the throat? When they threaten to make a ‘personal visit’? When they publish some web defamation? And steal photography and other content to use in selling their knock-offs?

A maturing internet has allowed opportunities previously having high entry barriers. Hundreds of thousands of have managed to join the two skills (technical and business) they have to jump into the murky waters of online commerce. The example of chess set retailing is real and current. The victim is a successful niche chess set company who suddenly appeared on the web by utilizing SEO skills, techie ability and a love of chess. After a year of trading, one of the chess competition noticed and started with threats and intimidation. But this has happened across many industries previously dominated by other web sites. What’s the best course of action and reaction?

Flattery. A fellow retailer has flattered us by recognising a loss of income from our attempts at online marketing of chess sets. Hell, we’re good! - what other industries might we impact?

No such thing as bad publicity. Accept any actual reference to our higher prices as publicity - keep sending them over to us.

Losing focus. We seem to be occupying the aggressor somewhat. Well, that’s something too. Whilst he’s focusing his energies on us, he’s distracting himself from his own company.

Poor business. Our chess retailing aggressor clearly has a poorer business model than us if he has to resort to this kind of behaviour. Harassing the competition in some mafia style suggests a bullying manner that would be better channelled elsewhere.

Legal action. ‘Theft’ of intellectual property rights (chess photography, chess product names, chess product descriptions…)- whether yielding any advantage or not - is just that - theft. So real court action may be required to bring the matter to a conclusion.

Conclusion
The new world is here. Online retailing and competition is a fact of life. Competition is good for consumers and good for business improvement. But as in the schoolground and in the High Street/Mall there are aggressive unethical bullies online too. Actions can be taken to offset the aggression, evasive tactics can be used with some success, but the end game may involve taking hooligans to the law to stop the murky activities affecting the peace of our lives and helping us have societies populated with people having admirable qualities we all look up to.

Good chess sets have weighting added to the bottom of the pieces. The base is hollowed out, lead poured in, and the base sealed and capped with a leather or felt disc to hide any imperfections. When I first saw a chess piece without the weighting and with the base apart from the piece, it was a kinda let-down. You realize that there really is not much to it - a hollowed out common base with the important part mounted on top. Of course, as with much else in life, the skill and dexterity is still very much a part of the finished article, even if we see it uncovered momentarily.

The value of a weighted chess piece is obvious in the use of the pieces during chess games. The pieces don’t easily fall over when nudged, don’t shift when the board is knocked, and just feel like something that is quality, thus enhancing the enjoyment of the game. The feel of lifting a triple weighted chess piece somehow makes you think more carefully about the move, move more definitely and move with greater confiidence. If the move is wrong-headed, the piece can then be offensively used as a weapon instead to save face whilst accompanied with the phrase ‘You Bounder! How dare you?’.

Actually humor aside, there is a wonderful weighted chess set we sell which is close to dangerous as I’ve ever seen a set. It’s the Triple Weighted Conventional Staunton Chess Set which  has spikes on the Queens coronet that could do serious damage to someone if misused it. Maybe we should issue a health warning with that one along with the Certificate of Authenticity that  comes with the more expensive weighted chess sets.

Weighted chess sets are wonderful. The general weighting is standard, then double weighted, then triple weighted. No actual standard exists for the gramme measurement, but chess specialists have come to know what is triple and what is double or standard. If you can afford it, put on a little weight!