#HTE

“Preset” Chess, Yea or Nay?

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:

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:”

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

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

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.

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?

http://www.core77.com/posts/53305/Preset-Chess-Yea-or-Nay