2 inch and 1.75 inch custom printed chess boards from American Chess Equipment

If you contact American Chess Equipment you can ask them to print you custom sized roll up mat chess boards. For me this was a game changer

I have used their wood grained chess board with 2.25" when I play in the park (quite a bit in good weather) but I have smaller sets that are more portable but don't look right at all on those large squares. Enter my new boards: 2" squares and 1.75" squares!

This is a first set of photos with unmodified boards for comparison (I cut off notations for portability), standard wooden sets are shown in this first set of photos for ease of reference. Large to small: 3.75" Fischer (chessbazaar), 3.25-3.5" Morphy (stauton castle they they give different sizes depending where you buy actual size is 3 and 3/8th)

2.25”, 2”, 1.75”:

2.25”, 2”:

In a short while, after some arts and crafts I will add some other photos with plastic pieces.

*** With welding rod container:

Excellent custom mousepad boards from Shelby/ACE. Time to break out the huge variety of sub-3.75" Kings vintage chess sets from those drawers and closets.    Are you trimming free-hand with scissors? Or a blade and a straight edge?

free-hand with scissors, I got several of both sizes, these are not show pieces, they will get frayed and dirtied in short order. My 2.25 inch one gets used on park tables a lot with take out food in both players hands , I hope the new small one (1.75) will often find itself on a table at a coffee shop once the virus subsides. 

I have an extremely specific plan in mind for the 1.75” board, a great chess set that always lacked the right board. I’ll cut things up and take pictures in abit.

Here we go: 1.75” (and cut down 2.25) for comparison

On the left: The Reykjavik Series Plastic Chess Pieces - 3.75" King

On the right: The Marshall Library Series Plastic Chess Pieces - 2.875" King

both by House of Stauton but available on many websites including Amazon.

The 2.875 Library sized plastic set is great, weighted but portable, excellent proportions, is basically a smaller standard tournament set, but I could never find a good rolled board for it until now.

Very nice! 😀

Wow, those are beautiful. In one of the photos, for a long while there I actually thought the small board was next to an honest-to-goodness wooden borderless board. O_O

Looks good to me.

For sure. I have been a fan of their Walnut and Maple roll up chess board for years. They have other wood grains and I have tried them, but for my tastes this is the best, as to my eyes it gives the best contrast to the pieces and is the next best thing to playing on a wooden board.

https://amchesseq.com/collections/tournament-chess-boards/products/we-games-rosewood-maple-grain-mousepad-chessboard-20-inches-made-in-usa?variant=7287715495994

Paired with a good plastic set the whole thing costs under 40$, something I don't mind abusing outdoors but is pleasant to use.

In case you're interested. A repurposed welding rod container makes a good travel case for that cut down 1.75" sq mat and pieces. Or just fold it up and squish it all into a zippered pouch.

I was going to buy a couple of these boards a few months ago but I seem to remember holding off because the coordinate orientation was going to change (letters displayed upright like numbers and each player having a "proper" upright orientation for half the coordinates)...anyone know if that plan is still in the works?

This was the missing piece. Rod containers are perfect.