Due to the widespread creation of new variants a wide variety of sizes can be found.
Chess board size in cm.
For over the board otb tournament play there are different specifications to keep in mind.
There is an official tournament guideline for fitting chess pieces to a chess board and visa versa.
The chess pieces should fit comfortably on the chess board being neither too crowded nor too isolated on the squares.
These boards are small and best used for either smaller traditional pieces or the range of 3 tall theme chess sets.
The uscf specifies that the base area of the piece should cover about 78 percent of the area of the chess board square.
Modest chess board measurements allow these boards to fit most anywhere from an end or coffee table to desk or display shelf.
The standard uscf tournament set has 2 25 inch squares and a king s height of 3 75 inches.
It states that the base diameter of the king should be no more than 75 of the diameter of the squares on the chess board.
Chess board and piece standards.
This may seem like an overly complicated guideline but basically this means that for approved chess pieces the board squares should measure about 2 to 2 5 inches.
The size of the board must also match the size of the pieces.
The united states chess federation uscf states that square size should be anywhere from 2 inches to 2 5 inches while the king s height should be 3 375 inches to 4 5 inches.
In 1617 pietro carrera proposed a variant that received his name carrera s chess with a 10 8 board later used in other variants such as capablanca chess and gothic chess.
For example a king with a 1 5 inch base.
The overall size of the chess board.
Chess boards for standard sets should have squares of approximately 2 2 1 2 inches 5 08 6 35cm.
The size of the squares on the chess board.