There are lots of Elizabethan chess sets out there in the big wide world, but this one seems extremely nice in the category of quality. The price proves my theory too. But not like it’s extremely expensive. It’s worth the quality you get for these little things. It’s made from crushed marble, and the king it 5 inches tall, which is pretty tall and hefty compared to other sets. If I could pick out my favorite piece, it would most likely be the queen, who has a very peaceful look on here face. I like that. Wish my wife did that every now and then.
This is a Civil War chess set from Chess Baron. Nothing too ‘out there’ with this set, but it’s still nice. No eye candy in the pieces, but they do look very well made. especially the knight, who looks like someone spent alot of time and effort on. The price is extremely high though. You could get a set even better than this one on Chess Baron for half as much. But hey, that’s just my own opinion. You may think this is one of the best sets you have ever seen. That’s how humans differ.
Awww, another Winnie the Pooh set from ChessBaron. I love this set because of the fact that not only do I love the show, but it brings back old memories long forgotten of my child hood. Kind of brings you back to the wonderful world of being a kid again. And I especially love the chess board that is included with this set. All themed up with Winnie the Pooh characters, specially coloured squares, and a story that reads “Pooh had forgotten how to play chess and the more he thought about it, the more muddled he got in his mind.”
Now, this is a set of chess pieces I might actually want. Winnie the Pooh use to be my favorite show when I was a kid. That’s practically all I ever watched. I didn’t think anyone still remembered that show enough to make something after it. Awww piglet, you’re so cute. You too Winnie. And get glad Eor. It’s all okay. As for the quality - all the pieces look really nicely carved, with some pretty good quality material used like all of the ChessBaron range of chess pieces they sell. (I figured if I said that, if they ever see this article, they would be happy with me)
Awww, how cute. I love these little figures. I almost forgot I’m looking at a chess set. Little cute foxies reading books, and duckys dressed up like my grandma. And some other animal in a little bonnet. I can keep on describing each piece for you but I’m pretty sure you can see for yourself. But they are just so cute, and I’m not sure why. Wait - guys arn’t suppose to think things are cute. woops. Hope none of my homies stumble upon this article. I must change personalities here - Ahem - yea, this sets okay. Rabbit looks like it would taste pretty good if I shot it and cooked it.
Ya know - I hate when I come across a set that just has nothing interesting to write about it. But that thought didn’t even come close to going though my head when I first saw this set. So much to say about this set! It makes no sense unless it’s based off of some Disney movie I’ve never heard of. Rabbits, squirrels, possums - just where to begin? And why are the possum thingys reading books? and squirrels trading nuts? Rabbits wearing jackets? Ohhhhhhh, I just don’t know. But this is a great set. Kind of like the dogs that are so ugly they’re cute.
This set kind of resembles some other sets Chessbaron offers on their site. It’s based on the old English army during the time of the civil war. Plus it’s hand painted. Which I don’t know who cares. A machine can paint just as well, and you don’t have to pay those things, but whatever floats your boat. Pretty accurate interpretation of the good ole days though. I love the detail that looks like was put into this. It really looks like a nice collectors set if your into this stuff.
A fantastic chess set in a 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. The SAC 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!
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.
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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!