REVIEW: Official Academy Chess Set (Plastic World Championship Pieces).

Official Academy Chess Set (World Championship Pieces). Available here (and better stock photos here as well): https://shop.worldchess.com/shop/official-plastic-chess-set

I apologize in advance that chess.com saw fit to turn all the photos sideways. I can not figure out how to flip them.

I pre-ordered this set months ago, and it arrived today. Overall, I am very impressed. The presentation is stellar, the board is serviceable for a cheap, folding cardboard board, and the pieces feel solid and balanced. For $50, in my opinion, the set is a good value for its design pedigree and for high-quality plastic pieces. It would also make a great gift because of the general high-quality feel and attention to detail, which includes the box design. If Apple made a chess set, this is what I would expect it to look like.

The pieces do not feel "overweighted" like some cheap ebay-pedigree sets (there are many out there), but they do not feel light, and one of the things that really sticks out to me is their balance. They feel like they would hold up in actual play extremely well. Maybe not quite bottom-heavy enough for extremely rigorous bullet, but otherwise I think they would make great blitz pieces.

The plastic is also notably a "hard" plastic. On many of my plastic sets, the plastic feels "soft" -- almost like if you pushed your fingernail into it hard enough, you could create a crease. These do not feel that way -- they feel hard and rigid, much like you would expect from, say, the exterior of an electronic -- like maybe on the back of your TV. I do not have an opinion on that being a good or bad thing -- it just stood out to me as being a bit different from the bulk of the plastic sets I have played with.

The design of the pieces is good, and does resemble the World Championship Chess Set quite closely. I don't think it's a perfect reproduction; the crosses on the Kings are a bit less defined and blend into the crown more, the knights do not have quite as slender of a neck, and the rooks, notably, have a hexagonal stamp in the top of them. But overall, for a $50 plastic reproduction, I think they did well, and I am very pleased with my purchase.

If we ever play chess in person again, I think this will be the set I start using.

I had this set on order for over two months and it never shipped so I canceled. I may just just reorder after reading your review. Thanks for the write up.

I agree that it is a fine set- smaller than the wood version (though I understand they do have a club version in boxwood too). I agree that due to the design, they do not tip easily at all, and the weight is not an issue in that regard. I wish they doubled the queens, and Id like to see a full size tournament version in plastic as well. I will teach my granddaughter chess on this set, perfect for kids.

Are they felted ?

The questions many are asking - Are the bases felted and is that a quad fold board?

It's a good looking chess combo but the cardboard board puts me off, especially if the pieces are not felted. I remember the old 1960's Jaques of London Staunton chess sets found in every school in the UK with their unfelted wooden pieces and cardboard boards. The pieces lasted forever, most of the boards were bound and held together with sellotape by the second term of use. Maybe cardboard technology has moved on but the question remains with me - How robust can a cardboard chess board be?

For those in the UK The London Chess Centre have the Official World Chess Academy set priced at £29.95 and other plastic/vinyl chess sets all in stock and ready to ship from 4th January after the holidays.

Yes, it is a quad-fold board, and the bottoms of the pieces have *something* -- I can't quite tell if it's thin felt or a textured paper. Feels like thin felt to me -- with emphasis on "thin." The bottoms should not scratch a board, but will not feel like luxuious felt. 

Seems like a “felted” sticker to me. I think it is paper with a textured surface. The bottom feels sealed to me, I haven’t tried taking a bottom sticker off because of that. 

A note that the grooves on the king are not in the same place as they are on the wooden set, they're slightly higher up for some reason on this plastic one. 

How long was the waiting time overall for people who did order this set? I keyed in my order last week but I've yet to receive a notification for the item to ship out. 

You can get this set at Chess House right now. $32 plus shipping

I have this set and I agree it's a pretty great value, considering the cost of the wood set.  And of course, since it's plastic everything is consistent where the wooden FIDE set seems to be riddled with varying issues (from the reviews I've seen here and reddit) depending on the set.

I put these on a kitchen scale just now.  Here are the weights.

I'd also agree with some kind of paper/sticker fake felt material.  It's very thin but again for $30 it's more than fine.  Great set to take with you traveling as the board folds up into 1/4 the size and the box it comes in is quite high quality (for this price point)

Just a quick FYI in case anyone is interested or was on the fence...amazon has a 35% off deal on this set as some sort of early Black Friday deal:

https://www.amazon.com/World-Chess-Academy-Official-Championship/dp/B08P3Q69M7

All told including tax (and free shipping) I ended up paying $26 (not to mention the extra 5% cashback for using their prime card) which seems like a steal. You might want to buy two sets in order to get extra queens.

Oh, wow, looks like maybe it has! That was quick! I ordered one yesterday and another one right before posting the link (need those extra queens and backup pieces) ... hopefully it comes back soon!

(plus a pretty hefty shipping charge)

As an option:

https://showfields.com/products/official-academy-chess-set
$39.99 Free Shipping in the US.

Are you by any chance in NY? You might be able to pick it up in person. I haven't been to this store in Lower Manhattan. Maybe give them a call to see if they have it in stock.

Yeah, apologies if earlier I was making it sound like *availability* was the key concern in my post. I was really only trying to point out the super low time-sensitive deal for $25 shipped price point from amazon. Hopefully this plastic set continues to be available at the usual prices long after the last wooden sets have all found happy homes.