Pro AI Electronic Chessboard Set – Full Wooden Pieces Recognition, 55cm Tournament Size Board, Luxury Chess Set with Wooden Pieces

This is one of the very rare purchases where the product exceeds my expectations. My grandson is on the chess team an I thought it would be fun to play against him remotely. Yes, there are iPad apps for this but, for me, playing on a real set just feels better somehow. As this was something I intend to leave on my coffee table, I really didnt want a plastic plugin gadget. I really wanted a full size set. After looking at all the competition, only Chessnut offered a full tournament size set with wooden pieces. Unless you saw the discrete control panel on the side of the board, you would NEVER realize this is a computer set. This set is beautiful. Setup literally took 2 minutes. I plugged in the charger (there is a built in battery so you don’t need to keep it connected) and downloaded the NEW app (there is an old and new version on the App Store). The set connected to my iPhone instantly over bluetooth. I selected a bot match and it was up and running. You literally just move your pieces and the board displays hidden LED lights on the squares showing which piece of theirs needs to move and where. If their move places you in check the board beeps. It is super fast and a PERFECT experience. The pieces that come with the set are nicely sized, good quality wood and does include extra queens. For the chess connoisseur, you can get premium tournament quality pieces directly from the manufacturer. If you are really attached to a particular set of pieces, you can purchase a sensor pack from Chessnut for around $50 and modify any wooden pieces to work with full piece recognition for your board. I am happy with the look and feel of the pieces that were included with the set. For me, the coolest part of this set is that it does not just recognize pieces are on the board, it can tell exactly WHICH piece is where because of unique chips within each piece. This is amazing if you want to setup a puzzle and get help - you just put the pieces on the board. The app has built in support for chess.com and lichess.org so challenging a friend works very easily. One other nice feature is that you can play against other computer players, phone players, or other people using different Chessnut sets (not just the pro). This set IS expensive and , for me, is worth every penny. At this time, you simply cannot get a better computerized tournament size wooden set. If tournament size is not a must for you, you can get the same functionality in Chessnut’s smaller sets for less than half the price. That said, if you want want the very best, this is it. HIGHLY recommended.

So beautiful but the app sucks and after a day the board would not turn off. And the lights didn't work.

I have a very fancy heavily weighted wooden chess set and was concerned that the standard wooden Chessnut pieces would be disappointing. But, they are really great. They are by no means “heavy” but they are also not too light. The board works great with the two major chess sites. With the app, or with a chrome browser extension called “Chessconnect” The app is also great by itself. It lets you take a picture of a chess image and import it into the engine, which makes reading chess books so much easier. No need to set the pieces up on the board, but you can do so(or with their other product, it will move the pieces to the proper squares). The only downside is they don’t yet allow you to turn off the very obnoxious beep when you disconnect from Bluetooth or when you are offline and go to save the game to internal memory. Hoping they fix this soon. It’s large, of course. I have a piece of felt under it to allow me to rotate the board easily. Sometimes it is hard to see what piece to move. Not because the LEDs are not bright, but because of the pieces are off centers they may block the light. Not a big deal, until you are in time pressure!

Awesome chess board but electronics did not work: This is the most conflicting review I've done in a long time - this chess board is very large and very cool. The pieces are clearly designed with care and so far I've had a great time playing on it pretty much every day. The wood is high quality and the craftsmanship is beyond any other board I've owned. The really big (and only) problem I have with the board is that the electronics haven't worked at all. I added a video to show what happens when I hold down the power button (a long push is supposed to turn it on, signaled by a green light), and sadly the board does not turn on at all, so I can't try any of the more advanced features. So, while I absolutely love the board, the only justification for the very high ~$650 price tag would be the advanced features, which do not work at all, and paying that much money for a normal board (even a higher quality one like this) is just nowhere near worth the cost. At this point, I cannot recommend the board.

No flaws in the wood that I can find and the electronics work perfectly. I love the online play, chess.com is way more enjoyable OTB. Cannot recommend it highly enough.

The chess pieces that came with the board were lightweight and a bit small, so I purchased the premium Chessnut pieces separately. They are beautiful and just heavy enough to be satisfying. I highly recommend the board with the premium pieces.

First, I love this and am giving it a thumbs up. But I have several caveats. I thought that what I ordered - the "Chestnut Pro - Luxury Play" - came with the premium wood pieces. No it doesn't, it comes with the basic pieces. The premium pieces are $150 more. This doesn't make much sense to me. The cost is in the tech, why would slightly better wood pieces account for that much extra? Even the basic pieces are quite nice. But this is very traditional styling, the wood is not exotic, there is nothing particularly fancy about the pieces. While this is a really nice set, it leans more toward function than form. The board, however, had several minor but surprising errors. I saw a few blemishes in the wood, and several of the squares didn't line up, with unusual gaps (see pics). My grandfather was a carpenter so I notice these kinds of things. He would never let an error like this go to a customer, and he neve charged anywhere near this much either. The board is huge, as advertised, tournament sized at 55cm. It's heavy and does not fold. It also does not come with a carry case, so it's not travel friendly. But the bigger issue for me is there is no storage option for the pieces. It comes with a foam tray, but that's already falling apart after just a week or so. Any other nice chess set I've owned comes with a felt lined storage box, either built into the board or separate. But the board, the pieces, the wood, the craftsmanship, are all secondary to the tech. The tech is really the main reason people will want this. I did have some issues getting it set up. First the battery would not charge - I suspect they let it get to low and when I got it it was too dead to turn on. Please note that you can't just plug it in and play - the battery has to be charged above 10% to turn it on. And this raises another concern - at some point, the batteries will die, so what we're supposed to do at that point? Anyway I charged and recharged and recharged until I finally got it to hold a charge. I'm not sure if the battery is damaged, I'll have to keep an eye on it. Then, I did have issues connecting with bluetooth and playing within the apps. After resolving those issues I learned that it connects to several different chess apps but many require accounts jus to try it out. I hate loading up my phone with apps, and I similarly hate signing up for a new account just to try something out. It took me several tries over the course of a week to get the bugs worked out, but I finally played games against the computer, against a remote friend, and an in-person game with app assist (tips & analysis). It was great, I'm glad I didn't send it back as I was tempted to do. I look forward to using this to improve my game. And, there are a lot of features here that I look forward to trying out, as well as using the board to help teach my children chess.

Bought this hoping for an "offline" experience against online opponents. The board works, but there's no way to hide the chess board on the phone app. Every time you want to look at the clock (which is tiny on the mobile app version of your favorite chess website), you also have to look at the board. For me, this defeats the purpose of having a physical board. I found myself either staring at the screen the whole time, or ignoring the screen and then mismanaging my time. In blitz play, it doesn't quite keep up with manic piece movements in a time scramble. For in-person play against friends, it keeps notation. If I was playing a longer or casual game, I'd probably choose an analog board. For blitz games, you'd still want to use a chess clock due to aforementioned time scramble problems. Sweet spot is probably rapid games where you want to take notes and analyze after. To analyze a game, you have to sync with the chessnut cloud (why?) and then go through a separate menu to find and open the game. To export the game to your analysis platform of choice, you have to go through the same menus and then copy the pgn to a clipboard. I purchased the premium version but if I could do it again, would buy standard and then put the money towards their DIY kit and my preferred wood pieces. I did not try playing one of their bots. Would not recommend for online play or short time controls.