What is the right thing? Two player’s show up for a tournament game. The player with black pulls out a standard staunton chess set except it’s pink and blue with an orange and white board. Both are standard tourhnament size. The white player complaines to the TD claiming the set is distracting. How do you rule?
I would rule in the favor of white.
From the rule book
also
Does white have a ‘better’ set?
I think both of the following have answered this well. I lost a game as a youngster when a playing
TD pulled out a Civil War Chess Set. I got the my opponents pieces confused. I complained about
the chess set at the beginning of the match, hoping to play with my own standard set, though,
far less beautiful.
The TD told me that “I am the TD, and what I say goes”. Being this my first or second tournament,
I did not argue further, assuming (years later finding out incorrectly), that “well, if he is a TD, he
must be right”.
Rob Jones
Thank you for the response!
Any TD who says anything like that, in conjunction with a game he is playing in his own tournament, should not be directing at all.
TDs playing in their own events should bend over backwards to be more than fair to their opponents. If the TD’s opponent objects to the TD’s set, let the opponent use his own, regardless of the merits of the two sets.
Bill Smythe
Well said!
Bob
I won’t go quite that far.
I’d still use my Staunton standard over my opponent’s Flintstones set. Of course, the club tournaments I both direct and play in use the club’s sets and clocks and nobody has to bring their own. It helps that there are other TDs in the club that can make rulings if anything comes up in my game.
That is really the key thing.
This is the standard.
rob jones
At the IESA tournament last year, two players set up a board with florescent green and dark purple pieces. One of the players had just bought the pieces at the seller’s stand. We checked very thoroughly with the opponent who did not mind playing on the set at all, making sure the other player knew that if there was an objection we’d rule for a set change.
Fortunately we did not get an objection from any of the neighbors it was a distraction. 
I’ve been playing with a white/red plastic set for some years now and never had an objection. I’d rule white/red is acceptable based on longstanding history in chess. (Even though I read somewhere that white paint and red lacquer used to be used to conceal unacceptable blemishes of wood tone, and thus regarded as ‘cheap.’) I’m transitioning to boxwood/ebonized boxwood, though.
But watch out if the red queen says “off with his head”.
We had several non-stardard standard sets at that tournament. I remember one player had a minature set. Another table had an orange and yellow set, and it was not at all clear which color was which. I asked them which player was playing white. They looked at the board for a few seconds then picked up all the peices and gave themselves the opposite colors as before. In all of these cases I informed both players that we had standard black and white chess sets available for us. No one took me up on it though.
. .
I believe that complaints about colorful chess pieces are motivated by mere aesthetics, the player merely not being used to colorful pieces and thus feeling slightly uncomfortable with them.
I doubt the commonly used argument that the colorful pieces are “distracting”.
The only color that is genuinely a problem is pure dark black, because the pieces absorb most of the light and are genuinely the hardest to see, as high school physics would correctly predict. If the rules are going to discourage certain colors, then they should discourage pure black most of all.
Brown pieces are fine.
I prefer color, and I dare say so would many of the youngsters that the USCF hopes will enjoy playing in tournaments.
Lighten up on the color restrictions. LightBlue and DarkBurgundy are not colors that “distract”.
What distracts me most of all about Staunton chess pieces is that the bishop has only one mitre groove, so this important distinguishing feature is often not visible depending on how the bishop is rotated. There should be two mitre groove on the bishop. But it is a very minor distraction.
. .
Does that mean we can’t use the Pepperidge Farms cookies?
Moderator Mode: Off
I am an optometrist and I was a TA in Optics. I also have done quite a bit of work in Low Vision dealing with colors, contrast, and the effect on vision. I also have played Chess and directed tournaments. I do know what is wanted and needed in a chess game as far as colors and contrast. Therefore I am qualified to give a professional opinion regarding this topic.
The above is simply not true. In the example that Gene quoted when making his above comment, the color of the pieces were orange and yellow. The author stated that it was not clear or obvious which of those colors would be the “White” pieces and which would be the “Black” pieces.
There are certainly more than one way in which the colors of the pieces and board might be distracting.
What we need to discuss is the topic of contrast. There needs to be enough contrast in the pieces of each color to be able to easily distinguish which is the “White” piece color and which is the “Black” piece color. I recall watching a gentleman bring a Lardy Chess set that had aged quite a bit. The lighter colored pieces had darkened so much that there was little contrast between those and the dark pieces. The opponent complained and this was upheld by the TD because it did take too much effort to distinguish the light from the dark pieces. This was a case of too little contrast.
Some of the colored pieces are of the “neon” variety of color, meaning they are quite bright to look at. You see road construction workers wearing shirts and vests of a neon yellow color. They wear these to have an increased contrast with the environment so drivers will better see them and not hit them. Because of the brightness of these pieces, I can easily imagine a game where these colors would distract a player because of too much contrast.
When playing a chess game, it is important to be able to look at the board and pieces without needing to adjust one’s vision to overcome either the lack of or too much contrast.
Once again, the above statement is wrong. The black pieces are not visual black holes that draw all light into them.
Contrast is the name of the category once again. The pieces simply need to have enough contrast with the squares. The Black pieces which Gene refers to are great on the standard green and buff chess boards, for example. Yes, if you use a board with black squares, the black pieces would have little to no contrast with the dark squares and would be lost on those dark squares, visually. However, on a board with brown, rosewood, blue or others of the more standard used colors for the dark squares, the pure black pieces are great with a very nice contrast.
Now we get into aesthetics. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Of course it isn’t correct to assume that children will want and desire what we adults want and desire, aesthetically.
Of course keeping within the realm of good contrast between the pieces themselves and the squares of the chess board is important.
I have played with a Burgundy and Cream Chess set with no visual or contrast problems.
I personally prefer real wood pieces and their natural colors. Most all of my sets have Rosewood, either the standard or Blood variety, as the dark pieces with a boxwood material for the light pieces. I do have the Dubrovnik 1950 set that you see in the vast majority of pictures with Bobby Fischer as his favorite set with walnut for the dark pieces. The boards I use either have green, mahogany, or walnut for the dark squares. I do make sure the dark squares and the dark pieces of the set I am using have a good contrast.
But aesthetically wood pieces are the best on many different levels. The board can be wood but the standard green and buff colors also go very well with the wood pieces.
Well, the miter cut certainly is not the only thing to help identify the piece as a bishop. I have seen some sets that do not have any miter cut whatsoever.
At the Illinois Class a few decades ago, one game in the D section was being played on a miniature peg-in set, with a board about 7 inches square. The clock was an old Garde, about 9 inches wide. The incongruity was hilarious. I couldn’t help laughing out loud.
Bill Smythe
I wonder what would happen if someone showed up at a tournament with THIS chess set:
Well, for one thing, knocking over your king to symbolize resignation would be an impossibility… 