Square Off Chess Set. A Smart automated Chess Board, which Moves The opponent's Pieces on its own. Play Against The AI or Anyone Across The Globe. with Built-in Auto-Reset Feature.

The media could not be loaded. Bottom line: if you or your kids are into chess, a Square Off board is a perfect fit. Yes, the price is high if you only compare it to traditional boards... but this is a premium, connected product that’s well worth the cost. I’ve looked around, and no other computerized board approaches Square Off’s combination of quality, connectivity and other features, even at 10x the price.Online chess is convenient because there are always opponents available, but in most other ways it’s inferior to playing on a physical board. There’s no substitute for the enjoyment the beauty and tactile feel of a quality chess set bring to a game… the trouble is finding someone to play against. When I saw the Square Off board on YouTube I was dazzled... it perfectly combines the advantages of physical board play with those of online play!Other electronic wooden boards (eg. by Millenium and DGT) cost much more than Square Off, and have at best VERY clunky & limited online connectivity. None support Chess.com.Square Off boards are the only ones on the market that move their own pieces… super fun, and way more like playing a real game of chess in person. The board is beautiful… not quite as nice as $1k-$5k DGT e-boards, but plenty nice enough to serve as a central feature of a room.There are several ways to play: against any of 20 levels of board AI (powered by Stockfish, the best available chess AI), against anyone else with a Square Off board or app, or against your Chess.com friends.Note: Square Off has some concerning Amazon reviews for boards bought late last year... reviews before and after that period were far more positive. I contacted the company… they claim a manufacturing partner didn’t follow their specs and produced some bad boards. They say they’ve fixed the problem in the current batch of boards, but I still wanted to make sure we really put the board through its paces, while I could easily return it if there was a problem. We’ve played vs. the AI; vs. friends, vs. family and random opponents who have a Square Off board or app; and vs. Chess.com friends… it performed excellently.Some “pros” for the Square Off board:- The AI is *very* easy to play at a moment’s notice. Turn the board on, launch the app, and within seconds you’re playing at the level of your choice.- As soon as a game completes, the app offers to open your game data in the “Analyze This” chess analysis app… it’s a great way to learn from every game.- The Grand Kingdom “auto-reset” feature takes a while, but it’s super cool. You can reset the board yourself if you’re in a hurry, but we always trigger an auto-reset… it’s a relaxing, entertaining process to watch. I included a clip in the video attached this review.- It’s easy to display the current piece positions on the app. That was helpful when my 10-year-old knocked some pieces over while making a move… a quick switch to the app’s board display made it easy to verify everything was put back where it belonged.- The board has a rechargeable battery in it, so we leave it unplugged most of the time. You can tap an icon in the app to see the remaining battery percentage.- The company can (and according to reviews, does) continue improving the features via app & firmware updates.Now some potential “cons”, none of which are a big deal to us:- The boards are rather large, as fine chess boards tend to be. The Kingdom Set is ~1.5x1.5ft, the Grand Kingdom is ~2x1.5ft. We leave ours set up on a coffee table to encourage frequent play and show it off to visitors… the size & quality of the board make it look like it belongs there.- The pieces are very nice, but they’re a little smaller and lighter than you’d expect for a normal board of this size & price. It’s pretty clear that’s because they must be light enough for the robotic mechanism to easily move, and small enough that a piece can fit between two other pieces. For example, knights obviously can’t jump over other pieces, so they instead move between and around them. See the attached video for a demo.- Capturing takes a little getting used to: when capturing a piece, the board first grabs your captured piece and drags it off the board (to its marked “parking spot” on the Grand Kingdom Set, or to just off the edge of the playing area on the Kingdom Set). Then it moves the capturing piece into the captured piece’s square. Again, see the attached video for a demo.- The app connects via Bluetooth, so you’ll need the device running the app to be fairly close by while you use the board.

I purchased the Kingdom Board and it worked great, for about 15 games. Then is started making grinding noises and wouldn't connect via Bluetooth. Here is where real frustration starts. The Company that makes this board is headquartered in India. Not necessarily a bad thing, however, if you are wanting to troubleshoot this with their customer service than you better be up between the hours of 9pm – 5am CST, otherwise you will not hear from them. So, knowing this in advance, I submitted a request detailing the steps I already did to try to fix (i.e. tilting the board as recommended) and asked them to please list a few troubleshooting tips for me to try in the morning. The next morning I awoke to the customer service rep saying to, “please try tilting the board”. That was it. They obviously did not read what I wrote and did not offer any other advice for fixing the board. I was very fed up at this point so I just returned the board via Amazon (thank you Amazon!).A couple of weeks later, Square Off was running a promotion for 20% off for Black Friday. I figured I would give it another shot as everyone deserves a second chance. I received my board and what do you know, this one DIDN’T WORK STRAIGHT OUT OF THE BOX! It was almost like the Company just sent me the same board I sent back as this one was doing the same thing, making a grinding noise and not connecting. I am in the process of contacting their customer service again in hopes of a fix, but right now am not feeling very positive about it. I submitted a video of the board making noise, and step by step instructions of what I did to try to fix the problem similar to last time. Again, I woke up in the morning to the customer service rep writing back telling me to try to tilt the board to fix. So, once again, they did not listen to what I wrote and gave me the same copy paste troubleshooting as last time. It is amazing to me that I have ordered two boards and both didn’t work. I would be cautious when buying this product due to the level of complexity and moving parts within the machine and hard time connecting to the customer service.If you are looking to buy, I would highly recommend waiting until they come out with version 2 of this thing. Also, they really need a customer service department that handles hours during normal operation for this part of the world as it is very difficult to troubleshoot if a problem does happen. One other thing is that it is very difficult to find any information on troubleshooting on the website or anywhere else. They really need to provide more help for users experiencing problems, especially for a product at this price point as it is not cheap. Having two boards crap out on me within one day of receiving is a very poor track record.

My original board stopped working after only 41 games. After several emails on how to replace it , which was still under warranty, I acquiesced to Square offs' procedure for replacement. Had to return defective board before receiving replacement.I'm pleased with the new promised replacement board and haven't had any problems thus far.

I am sorry for the two star rating, would be one star, but it is truly great idea, but it’s not ready for production. I played many games on it for a couple days, but it’s really frustrating because you can play a few plays and then it will miss registering a play requiring a reset and retry of the play. It can be so bad that you literally have to resign the game and start over. How to reset? I figured out one way is to click and open the resign game page and thecancel that returning to the game will get it start waiting for your move again. Then if you’re lucky, it will register your move. Sometimes it will not get your move so a resign and restarting a game is only possible. I purchased thru Amazon allowing 10 day return privilege. After just two days, I could take no more of this frustrating experience. Perhaps I’ll try it again in a few years when hopefully it will be ready for market. Too bad because it’s such a great idea and the features are great! Mercy, I am so disappointed in this product! :(