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.

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.

Let's be frank: this board has a hefty price tag – but if it works, it's worth it for a chess enthusiast. When opening the box, you're likely to be enamored with the board's craftsmanship at first sight. It's a beautiful wooden board that looks like it's built to last. As some reviewers have noted, the pieces are somewhat small – though they were not quite as small as I had imagined. One sign of good quality here is that the felt on the bottoms of these pieces were never off-center. Moreover, it is nice to see that an extra queen is included for both sides – though truthfully, for the price of this board, including two sets of pieces in case of breakage would be ideal. Yet, while all of this sounds like the lead up to a five star review; the board didn't work. As other reviewers have bemoaned, the board came out of the box defective – the magnetic mechanism grinds incessantly, even after following the diagnostic steps provided in the app. This is where the process becomes unbearable. Communicating with customer service is a nightmare, as you can only reach them from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. India Standard Time. Even when you preface your message by explaining that you've already tried the "quick fixes," they will sugest those very same quick fixes in response. Finally, after about a week of back and forth, a refund was confirmed via Amazon and now we have to waste the time repackaging the whole thing and sending it back. Horrible experience! Bottom line: A chessboard that costs over $400.00 and takes weeks to arrive needs to come out of the box working. And, when anomalies occur, you have to have impeccable customer service in place to get the problem fixed right away. The technology is amazing, but it means nothing if it doesn't work! I would strongly recommend waiting until these bugs are fixed before rolling the dice on having to deal with disappointment and the hassle of getting your refund!

I love chess, but the biggest problem with chess is that you need someone to play with, and yes you can do it on the computer or your phones but it just doesn't give you that physical feel. I want to pick up pieces and move them, capture my opponents pieces. It's simply more fun that way than staring at your screen and playing. This product so amazingly solves that issue. You can play against the board OR against an opponent sitting continents away through the app. It adds that realistic feel that I felt that was missing while playing against a computer. The AI on the board is super good, I have only beaten it up to level 4. I mostly prefer playing against other regular players available on the app, I feel they make mistakes like we all normal players do. So other day I challenged my buddy in New York (I live on the west coast, and he doesn't have the board), he was able to download the app and play against me on it (while I was playing on the board) which is such a great feature. Physically and visually the board is beautiful! It is well constructed, and has quality components. It looks nice in our house and we love showing it off. The pieces are slightly light, but I guess they have to be since the machine underneath the board has to move them magnatically and they can't be that heavy for it to do so. The motor under the board has gears (you can hear them) and the make a slight noise, but you get over it real quick as no machine is completly silent in this kind of operation. One thing I would suggest is to save the box it comes in, the board doesn't come with any sort of cover to prevent it getting dirty or scratched while storing, and box has foam inside which will keep it safe from denting and scratching and will keeep it looking brand new ( I know, it's not ideal, but trust me, you will realize it in time). As for the value for money, I feel this is one of the best purchases I have made in a while and it keeps me from staring at my phone for hours for no reason. I saw a lot of negative comments here before buying but after using the product now I feel some of them were unwarranted (sometimes you do get defective product and that's just how it is, you can buy any product and it could happen with that, simply return it and get a new one from Amazon). I personally did not have any of the issues that some people said they had, so I'm guessing it was probably a defective piece. All in all, a great purchase, buy it and add me on your app and let's play sometime!

Darn. I really liked this. It's a nice quality board. I played against the game, it moved its own pieces (and mine when it was capturing them). I have the Grand Kingdom version which even reset the board after a game, moving all the pieces back to their starting positions. Fun! But... on the forth day I turned it on to play a game and was met with a very loud grinding noise. I turned it off, tried tipping the board front to back to get the mechanics back to its starting position, then tried turning it on again. ... Nothing. The ON button light won't even turn on. I give this five stars for being really nice and very fun, but zero stars for mechanical robustness. Failing after a handful of games is not good. Two stars. I returned the board for a refund. I may try again ... but I'll give them some more time before I do, to get fully up to speed on quality control and/or make mechanical improvements, whichever applied in my case.

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.

I received this chess board about two weeks ago. I wanted to test it out before writing this review. I ordered this board for my son who is in high school. He used to play chess at school but has lost practice for about a year. He was extremely excited seeing this board and couldn’t wait to start playing again. He’s been playing two to three games regularly for the last couple weeks with the artificial intelligence. It’s definitely been challenging for him. He’s only gotten to level 3. My son was also able to have his cousin in Connecticut download the app on her phone. He played on the physical board while his cousin played on her phone. What a cool and amazing feature. In addition, he’s been able to watch matches between professional players live in front of him and learn new chess techniques from the experts. I’ve also used the board several times and have thoroughly enjoyed it. The board is well constructed and solid. It’s almost like a work of art and displays well in the house. The motor does make a slight sound while setting up and while in use to move the pieces. This is completely normal as it is a mechanical game. The board was packed well. It came without any damage or scratches and arrived quickly. This is definitely a pricey investment but for someone who enjoys playing chess, it’s is very worthwhile. I would recommend it to all chess lovers.

I first saw this product in CES 2018 and was very curious on how will the final product come out. I am delightfully surprised to say that they have surpassed my expectation about this outstanding gameboard. Pros 1. You can play against the built-in Game AI. The chess pieces on the AI side moves automatically after every move from the User. 2. It has made chess interesting again. SquareOff leverages phone to connect with users online for the play and make a move on your board from a distant location. 3. The setup was easy with unboxing, connect to the app and start playing. 4. The board looks and feels great. It is meant for medium to large size table with some real wood material used to make the design elegant. 5. The smartphone app is flawless 6. The board is great for kids and teens as it allows them to avoid screentime spent on mobile gaming. Any Cons? No I did not notice any cons in the short time I have used. However, for someone looking it from the price point may find this on the high side of that spectrum. It is likely that when you use the product, it’s value can be realized Final Word If you are a Chess Enthusiast, have kids or friends who are into chessboard games, you should buy this without giving it a second thought. The idea of saving screen time and pushing kids and adults to play an actual game can be tuff sometimes. I discovered that this chessboard could help in that area. It is apart from the immense benefit a chessboard provides in developing intellect and strategic thinking in an individual.

This was a much anticipated board that my children and I saved up for, for awhile. We were so excited when it finally arrived today. My two young boys throughout the day checking the front porch to see if it was delivered yet 😜. Once it did arrive we carefully unpackage the board and followed the quick start guide step by step. ( the packaging was top notch). After downloading the corresponding app and charging the boards battery. We link the board to the app and it proceeded to apply the needed firmware update. Once complete we set up the pieces and started a level 4 match against the A.I. First we tried playing as white and correctly moved our first piece with board acknowledging with audible tones. Then it was the A.I’s turn (Black). We heard movement from within the board but no piece on the black side moved😞. The app said it was our turn, we moved again hearing the core t audible tones for a successful move. A.I then was suppose to move but only fain sounds from within the board but no moving pieces. We then reset the game manually and tried again...... sadly same result 😞. I then searched the internet for possible troubleshooting tips and only really found instructions to take the pieces off, then power down the board and the tilting it on it’s horizon axis back and fourth slowly and then trying again. After turning back on and reconnecting and again setting up the pieces we tried to play again once more..... this time black pieces did not even come close to moving to their correct destinations, pushing other pieces out of the way and even knocking some over. 😡. For good measure I also tried playing a new game but choose to be black side........ same result. In the end I reached out to square off via e-mail, posting requests for help via there social media sites etc. no response as of yet and my two young boys were heartbroken. I then let amazon know of the defective product that was delivered and will be getting another board in three days. ( thank you Amazon!). As for squareoff. I hope my replacement board is in good working order because I really hate witnessing the disappointment on my two young boys faces and spirit. They worked so hard to be able to finally get this board only to be let down. 😩.