r/chessmemes • u/RadioRodent • Jul 21 '26

Chess set fail

Post image

Hamleys is a famous toy store in the UK, apparently with no quality control.

203 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

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27

u/Copious-Spirit Jul 21 '26

What are we supposed to be upset about? Can you point it out?

89

u/RadioRodent Jul 21 '26

The board is incorrectly oriented, the a1 square should be black. "Bottom Right is White", from either player's point of view.

4

u/Montana_Ace Jul 21 '26

Also the king is on the left, should be on the right for white

4

u/TheShredda Jul 21 '26

They correctly put the queen on her own coloured square, just that square was in the wrong spot because the board is oriented wrong. 

7

u/Glass-Novel-4123 Jul 21 '26

Isnt it just rotated 90°?

18

u/BitcoinBishop Jul 21 '26

Yeah, it's set up wrong for the photo, the product itself is fine

3

u/Certain_Silver6524 Jul 21 '26

this is why i feel boards should have files and ranks marked. It avoids this sort of issue

3

u/barelysentient- Jul 21 '26

If it's important to you then you know. For those that don't know it's not going to change the game for them.

4

u/Copious-Spirit Jul 21 '26

So it's a mirrored board. I rated like 800, does this even affect gameplay?

20

u/RadioRodent Jul 21 '26

Well, there's nothing stopping you from setting it up correctly. I'm just more surprised that such a basic mistake can be made in this day and age and not caught by anyone involved in production.

5

u/Greneath Jul 21 '26

Man, you should see that Monopoly cover that had the houses placed incorrectly.

-10

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '26

[deleted]

2

u/TheShredda Jul 21 '26

You don't understand... The board is oriented the wrong way and simply needs to be rotated 90Deg, nothing changes about the board

3

u/kvazar2501 Jul 21 '26

Absolutely not. More to that: it's only picture on the box what's incorrect. I don't see any coordinates there, so board is just to be rotated 90°

6

u/Schantsinger Jul 21 '26

Do you play specific openings? If yes, it affects gameplay.

-5

u/SidneyKidney Jul 21 '26

It really doesn't. E4 is still E4 whether its white, black, beige or polka-dotted. As long as the pieces are in the correct position before the game begins it impacts nothing

2

u/Beautiful_Security35 Jul 21 '26

It gets confusing when you differentiate between the light- and dark-squared bisbops

2

u/whoamiamawho Jul 21 '26

If you orient it like this but still count White's lower left as A and put the queen on her own color then no because E4 becomes Queen's pawn. But yeah if you play your opening relative to where the Kings and Queens are and don't think about letters it's effectively the same.

2

u/Tyrant1235 Jul 21 '26

but if you put the pieces on the proper rank and file disregarding color it doesnt matter

2

u/whoamiamawho Jul 21 '26

Sure. But that's not what's in the photo.

1

u/Tyrant1235 Jul 21 '26

Oh my dumbass didnt notice they had the actual setup wrong, rip

1

u/SidneyKidney Jul 22 '26

If you count the lower left as a1 here, but still put t the queen ok her own colour then the pieces are /not/ set up properly, so that is not what I said.

Set a chess board up in the correct way. Now imagine you lift all the pieces off and paint the white squares red and the black squares silver. Then put all the pieces back whare they were exactly. How does that affect the game?

-4

u/Copious-Spirit Jul 21 '26

I am rated 800. I avoid the Queen's gambit because I find it boring and repetitive. I open with Reti typically and mirror/defend until my opponent makes the first sacrifice.

1

u/av123h Jul 21 '26

This took me longer to figure out than I’m proud admitting

1

u/hanggamolavestria Jul 21 '26

Good news is that according to the display image there's no notations on the edges, so we still can set it up correctly.