seem to be strange bedfellows,
but not any more, apparently true chess fans, and it is reckoned there are 24 million of them worldwide, know that there’s nothing like playing
on a high-quality physical board, which was a bit of a problem if your opponent is a few thousand miles away,
but now Square Off allows opponents to play against one another
remotely, through an app or online, it connects to your phone via Bluetooth and
uses a robotic arm underneath the board to reproduce the opponent’s moves, by
guiding the pieces on the checkered surface. The robotic arm working behind the
scenes to make the magic happen uses a magnet to guide the wooden pieces, which
have their own magnets, on the board,
the same thing happens on your opponent’s board, if they happen to be using a Square Off set. According to a Cnet article “to play, you need to press down on a piece, which elicits a quiet beep, make your move and press down a second time to confirm the position”,
but Square Off is about more than just automatically moving
pieces, it basically allows users to find human opponents virtually anytime, and also has a built-in AI component that offers 20 difficulty levels.
Reportedly, the board’s highest difficulty setting is the equivalent of an Elo
rating of 3380. The currently highest ranked chess player in the world, Magnus Carlsen, has an Elo rating of 2886, as you may have guessed, this smart analog
chess board isn’t cheap, the Square Off Kingdom set sells for $369, while the
larger Grand Kingdom set costs $445. Are they worth it? It
depends on how much you enjoy playing chess on a physical board, but as with
many hobbies or pursuits, they are not cheap, I shudder to think how much I
have spent on my hobby of photography over the years.
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