Novag Citrine Review (Part 1)

Part 1 of a review of the Novag Citrine auto-sensory wooden chess computer.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• chess
• novag citrine
• chess computer
• board
• game

[Za7a7aZ]

Thanks for your review. Because I would like to own a tournament size chess computer the citrine is the next best thing available. The are the dgt boards but these are not stand alone chesscomputers. Maybe you are interested to see how an other Citrine owner built a chess table around his Citrine and the end result is very handsome although I would have used other wood. You can find it at davitoolsDOTcom/citrine/citrin­etable_assemblingDOTaspx.

[trappedinthefuture]

@Za7a7aZ Thanks for the interesting link.

[Za7a7aZ]

Its a shame that Novag deliver such low quality pieces with the board. I owned a NOvag constalation and it had a feature where you could verify the positions of all the pieces at any time in the game. You know, when you got for some reason the pieces mixed up at the wrong place during the game. I am interested in the citrine because of the big board size but I am a little disappointed in the overall tec of the board...it looks so 1990's. Do you know of an alternative in the same price range?

[trappedinthefuture]

@Za7a7aZ The Citrine will also verify pieces when you lift them but it's not really a proper verify function. The machine is also a bit 1990s inside. I opened it up and it's really quite an old-style circuit board. It only has an RS232 interface; no USB. I'm afraid I don't know of any alternative at that price point. I think the less expensive machines are plastic but some of them do look quite good functionally speaking.

[trappedinthefuture]

I have to lift the pieces higher and sometimes I have a problem with a square getting stuck on. This is because the Chessbaron magnets are not consistently aligned and somehow this causes the magnets to interfere with each other. However, I must add that these pieces are so nice that it's worth this occasional minor hassle. It doesn't really detract from the game at all.

[trappedinthefuture]

Have a look at part two (Lj2A6ZhfkFg) -- Here I compare the default and Chessbaron pieces and then show the enhanced pieces in use. These pieces are a good size and not too big, but they do have extra-strong magnets.

[undeadnightorc]

I was watching some GM chess blitz games (OTB) and in most of the vids I notice they are playing on a board that senses the player moves

What's interesting is, the players didn't have to move the pieces carefully so as to allow the board to detect the proper moves. They moved the pieces like they normally moved them (sliding the pieces didn't confuse the computer).

I wish modern chess computers could be sold that utilized this type of smart sensing board.

[pacmandem]

Could you do a quick video of the citrine with the ChessBaron enchanced pieces?

(I've now bought a citrine and want the enhanced pices but fear they might be too big for the squares and also whether they'll over-magnetise the reed switches (which i'm not sure i'll get a straight answer about from the exclusive seller of these pieces)

[Vsquad38]

Thanks for review