Beyond Chess Revisited

A while back I wrote about how I encountered the game called Beyond Chess. I don’t get the game out every month, but it is a regular fixture when I teach the Chess merit badge, and it has also been on a couple of trips. What fascinates me the most, I guess, is how little information there is about the game on the Internet. There is almost no discussion on Board Game Geek and the original web site is defunct. Even the “wayback machine” (aka the Internet Archive) doesn’t have anything useful! There is nothing on Amazon, and as I write this there is one active listing on eBay (asking price: $39.95) and nothing in the 90 day sales history.

Not too long ago I was in Denver and I stopped by one of my favorite stores: Black and Read. What did I find? I found another copy of Beyond Chess! But with a twist!

As I wrote up in my earlier blog post (linked above) the first copy of the game I purchased was missing a pawn. After a bit of research I was able to determine the proper size to order for a replacement, and all is well. When I saw the second copy of the game at the store I felt compelled to open the game and verify the contents.

Hm. The box was the same. The bag was the same. But the squares were … bigger? And instead of being black and white they were more of a cream and green, which is the color of a typical vinyl tournament chess set. The chess pieces were also definitely bigger.

Being in Denver, I was not able to directly compare to the set I already owned. I called my wife and she was able to send me some pictures of my current version. Yes, the squares of my first set were definitely smaller. And the king (remember the height of the king can be used to determine the classification of the chess set) was definitely taller in the set I was looking at. The game components were definitely different, but the box (and the UPC code on the back) were definitely the same!

I bought it. And it rekindled my desire to learn more about the game.