My chess sets: Russia v USA

This is an occasional series of postings inspired by a brief discussion on the flight home from Turkey this summer. The flight attendant saw I was reading a chess book (quelle surprise) and, just making polite small talk, said she also liked playing chess, saying that depending on whether other crew members played, she would play on stopovers. Later in the flight she asked me if I had a chess set at home…and that set me thinking. How many chess sets do I have? And since then number is, well, shall we say, quite high, I thought I would blog about them especially those which ‘mean something to me’.

Whenever a member of our family goes away on holiday, he or she has to bring back presents for the rest of the family. I am always the easiest to buy presents for: a chess set. In this case, my son Tom visited St Petersburg on a sixth form school trip and he came back with this beautiful United States v Russia set.

I have used it a few times, but it is mainly ornamental, and will always be treasured.

Rating

8/10: not a good set to play with, but a lovely memento of the first trip by a member of my family to Russia.