Chess is not black and white

We´ve all heard that this or that isn´t black and white. That goes for chess as well. Boards and pieces are often made of wood and thus comes in a lot of different colours. Vinyl boards, often as not, have green and white(ish) squares. In the past when luxury sets were made from ivory red pieces were common. I like red pieces. And I love colours. So now I´ve ordered some colourful plastic pieces from a polish vendor, I´m exited!

Can always put a shade of Grey in the mix ?

Having different colors can be a fun change, but I think that free choice of colors can make the game unplayable unless you have a strong value contrast. If you play with teal and red, for example, which side is which? Do teal and red have the same assignments when paired with other colors? Maybe its not a big deal to remember red is black for one game. Just some (obvious) thoughts. Enjoy.

Of course the colours of the pieces have to be contrasting so that one can tell the sides apart. The pieces I´ve ordered are one set of the usual black/off white variety, then bright red, white, green and yellow. That should give me about a dozen useable combinations.

It took longer to get pieces from Poland to Sweden (both european countries) than it usually takes to get things here from India, but now I´ve got them. Very nice, unweighted (but solid minus a small hole for weighting) and unfelted (but no longer so). The plastic has a nice feel to it and the pieces are a joy - and fun! - to play with.

Thanks for posting @hermanjohnell. I tend to be be more of a dark/light persuasion (not just black/white) as opposed to the more color combinations as shown. I can envision having a set with the same colors as one’s favorite sports team or school colors. As you’ve stated, you have many choices!

It´s a pity they don´t come in blue...

I play with plastic pieces (red and white) on my DGT Centaur:

I’ve seen quite a few blue sets on the market. Or is it that the maker you purchased from isn’t offering them?

They can also be found in blue:

https://www.scacco.it/en/prod/scacchi-da-torneo-in-plastica-staunton-gambit-rosso-blu-19188_10418

YES! Soon I´ll be playing with a yellow and blue set!

Red pieces were common in the 19th century and there were red and white/ivory as well as red and black/ebony sets. I´ve always liked red pieces.

I often say life is not black and white, and I live in the grey … and a mate of mine noted one day … “No mate you live in the colour between black and white.”

Historically, chess was not always black & white. The combination of colours in chess were often influenced by the customs of the region and culture, the time period and its fashions etc.

If you look at the origins of chess, in particular at the Indian chaturanga, the colours are different. During the reign of the later Sassanid king Khosrau I (531–579), a gift from an Indian king (possibly a Maukhari Dynasty king of Kannauj) included a chess game with sixteen pieces of emerald and sixteen of ruby, i.e. the colours were green vs. red. These were for many centuries the predominant colours in traditional Indian chess sets. Here are some examples.

The most popular colours for European bone and ivory chess sets in the 19th century (including the export chess sets made in India and China for British colonial officers) were red and white, presumably because cochenille (used for the red pieces) was the most expensive dye available at that time. Again, here are some examples.

Another popular combination, albeit much rarer, was green & white.

Black & white as a colour combination has a long history too. The Persian epic Shahnameh (شاهنامه) mentions the nature of chess pieces on several occasions. The Shanameh is one of the most famous and, with more than 50,000 verses, most extensive works of Persian literature. It was written around 1010 AD by the Persian poet Abu ʼl-Qasim Firdawsi. Firdawsi essentially reproduces the contents of the Chatrang-namak, the “Chess Book”, a Middle Persian text that tells how chess arrived at the Iranian court from India (which according to modern research may well be fiction rather than fact).

The relevant passages explicitly mention wooden chess pieces. Edmond and Arthur George Warner have translated these passages of the Shanameh into English as follows:

„They set the board and men before the Sháh,
Who looked upon the pieces for a while.
Half of the set was made of ivory
And bright, the other half of teak.”

At a later point it says:

„Those men of wisdom called for ebony,
And two of them – ingenious councillors –
Constructed of that wood a board of foursquare
To represent the trench and battlefield,
And with both armies drawn up face to face.
A hundred squares were traced upon the board,
So that the kings and soldiers might manoeuvre.
Two hosts were carved of teak and ivory,
And two proud kings with crowns and Grace divine.”

This indicates that the pieces given to the Iranian ruler were made of ivory and teak, i.e. white and dark brown. So it could well be that this was the origin of the colour combination of white and black that is still common today (a view, inter alia, expressed by Deborah Freeman Fahid, Chess and Other Games Pieces from Islamic Lands, London 2018, p. 65).

The Lewis Chessmen supposedly were dyed red.

An article on the subject.