The chess board of the future

I want the chess board of the future. I want to unroll my board, set up my pieces, start playing and have the board automatically notate the game for me. My opponent should also have the game notated on his side of the board.

The technology to do this is almost here. Flexible LCD screens are coming. When they arrive in commercial production, they will be cheap enough that they could easily be incorporated into a standard vinyl chess board, if the board was just a little bit wider.

The pieces would have RFID tags to uniquely identify them. The board would need to have a sensor grid on each square to determine which piece is on the square. Then, all it takes is some straightforward programming to convert each move into the appropriate algebraic notation.

This could also be expanded to handle bughouse. If two chess boards are placed next to each other (and maybe if you select the "bughouse" option), then each board will handle its portion of the game. Moves on the other board would need to be communicated to the other board--each board ends up notating the entire game.

The chess board should automatically store the last ten games for you (or more, depending on memory). When you are ready, you should be able to send the games to your PDA or desktop computer for long-term storage.

This is what I want in a chess board.

Last updated: November 1, 2003

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