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If you only buy one classic set, buy a chess and checkers board with storage drawers — it covers two games with one object and it is the version people actually leave out. Our pick is WE Games’ 15 inch French Staunton chess and checkers set, because the pieces are weighted solid wood and both sets live in felt-lined drawers under the board. If you want a set for club play rather than the living room, the triple-weighted tournament set is the honest answer instead, and for backgammon the leatherette briefcase set is the one that includes the doubling cube budget sets leave out.
That is the short version. The longer version is the more interesting question, and it is the one almost nobody asks before buying a chess set: why are these three games the ones worth owning a real board for, when we spend most of our time on this site telling you that the classics have been outclassed?
Most classic games have been fixed. These three never needed it.
Read enough of our coverage of the classics and a pattern shows up. Our guide to Monopoly is warm about the memories and blunt about the design: player elimination combined with a two-hour runtime is a fatal mismatch, and the good ideas in that box would be better served by a fifteen-minute card game. The auction game For Sale is essentially that fifteen-minute card game, and it fixes almost everything Monopoly gets wrong. Our guide to Clue says something similar in a friendlier register: the deduction system underneath Clue is genuinely great, and the roll-and-move race bolted on top of it is the part no modern designer would keep.
The list goes on and it is remarkably consistent. Trivial Pursuit hands you a question whose difficulty is pure luck and gives you no decision to make about it. Battleship has no call-and-response — your defense is one hundred percent front-loaded at setup, and after that you are only ever taking shots. Guess Who is an interesting idea with a hat problem. Yahtzee is surprisingly durable but its tension drains as the sheet fills, which is exactly backwards from what a push-your-luck game should do. In nearly every case our honest advice is the same: keep the memories, buy the modern game that fixed it.
Chess, checkers and backgammon are the exceptions. And they are exceptions by precisely the standards that condemn the others.
All three are two-player games where every move is offense and defense at once — the call-and-response that Battleship is missing entirely. Their tension rises rather than drains: chess endgames get sharper as material comes off, checkers gets more brutal as the board empties, and backgammon has an entire piece of equipment, the doubling cube, whose only job is to escalate the stakes as the position clarifies. Where luck exists at all it is backgammon’s dice, which are re-rolled every single turn and are answerable by the cube, rather than a single question card that decides your game. Nobody is eliminated. Nobody waits. There are no rules to relearn.
So these three are the only classics where the correct purchase is not a replacement game. It is a better copy of the same game. That changes the question from which game should I buy to which set should I buy — and a set is judged on things no game specification has ever had a column for.
One boundary before we go further, because we own a page that sits right next to this one. Our best wooden board games list is about modern games that happen to be made of wood — Quoridor, Nekojima, Cathedral, Tokyo Highway. This page is the opposite: ancient games, and the question of which physical object to buy. If you want a beautiful wooden game that was designed in the last thirty years, that list is the one you want. If you want to own chess, you are in the right place. Our best classic board games list sits in a third spot again — it is a list of family-table hits like Clue and Rummikub, not of the ancients.
What actually separates one set from another
There is no player count to compare, no playtime, no designer. WE Games publishes dimensions and materials because those are the specifications that exist for a physical object, and they are the ones that decide whether a set gets used. Four things matter.
- Piece-to-square proportion. This is the one people get wrong. A king’s base should cover roughly three quarters to four fifths of its square — enough that the board reads clearly, not so much that you cannot get a finger in beside it. It is checkable arithmetic when a publisher prints both numbers: WE Games’ tournament set pairs a 1.875 inch king base with 2.25 inch squares, which is about 83 percent, and that is why it looks right in photographs of actual tournaments.
- Piece weight. Weighted pieces do not tip when you knock the table, and they make the game feel like an event rather than like a toy. The tournament set’s pieces weigh 3.8 pounds collectively, which is a real number you can compare against the unweighted sets that ship with cheap boards.
- Material, honestly considered. Wood is better to own. Weighted plastic is better to carry, better to replace, and is what clubs actually use. Cork, which shows up on one backgammon set below, is a genuinely functional choice rather than a decorative one, because it deadens the sound of dice.
- Where the pieces live. This is the quiet one, and it is the single best predictor of whether a set stays in the room or migrates to a closet. Drawers, grooves, a folding magnetic board, a case that latches — a set with nowhere to put the pieces becomes a set with a bag of pieces next to it, and then it becomes a set nobody sets up.
You will notice we are not quoting prices. Prices on physical goods move constantly and by seller, so check the current price on each listing rather than trusting a number we typed once. What does not move is the specifications, and those are what we have verified against WE Games’ own product pages.
The best chess, checkers and backgammon sets
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1. WE Games French Staunton Wood Chess & Checkers Set, 15 inch — the one to buy first
This is the set we would put in front of somebody who owns none of the three games and wants to stop thinking about it. It is a camphor wood veneer board with inlay along the border, measuring 15.75 by 15.25 by 2.75 inches, with 1.56 inch squares and weighted solid wood pieces. Chess and checkers share the same 64-square grid, so one board is genuinely two games, and this set ships both sets of pieces.
The feature that earns it the top spot is not the veneer. It is the two drawers, one on either side of the board, each lined with felt, one for the chessmen and one for the checkers. That solves the problem that actually kills classic sets in real houses. A board with nowhere to put its pieces ends up as a board plus a ziplock bag, and a board plus a ziplock bag ends up in a closet. This one goes back to being furniture in about four seconds, which means it stays on the shelf where somebody might walk past it and start a game.
Who should skip it: anyone buying for tournament or club play. The pieces here are proportioned for a handsome 15 inch home board, not for a regulation 2.25 inch square, and hauling a solid wood cabinet to a club night is nobody’s idea of a good evening. Buy the next set instead.
2. WE Games Triple Weighted Tournament Chess Set with Travel Bag — the one clubs actually use
If your chess is competitive rather than decorative, this is the honest recommendation, and it is going to look like a downgrade until you understand what it is for. It is plastic pieces on a roll-up vinyl mat in a canvas bag, and WE Games states plainly that it meets the World Chess Federation’s height, weight and proportion standards for tournament play. The king is 4 inches with a 1.875 inch base, the squares are 2.25 inches, the pieces are triple weighted and weigh 3.8 pounds together, and the board carries algebraic notation printed along its edges so you can record and analyze a game.
Two details tell you this set was designed by people who play. It includes two extra queens, because promoting a pawn is a thing that happens and fishing a captured queen back out of the pile is not how you want to handle it. And the board rolls rather than folds, which means no crease running down the middle of your position. The notation on the board edge is the kind of feature that sounds like clutter and turns out to be the reason you can talk about the game afterwards.
Who should skip it: anyone buying a gift, or buying for a room. This set is a tool and it looks like one. Nobody has ever complimented a vinyl chess mat. If the set is going to live on a sideboard rather than in a bag, buy the French Staunton.
3. WE Games Magnetic Folding Walnut Wood Travel Chess Set, 10.5 inch — the one that leaves the house
A walnut veneer board that folds shut on itself, measuring 10.50 by 10.50 by 1 inches open, with 32 magnetized Staunton pieces in light and dark wood, a 2.19 inch king, and a felt-lined interior the pieces store inside. It is the travel set that does not feel like a compromise, because it is wood rather than the usual plastic clamshell.
The magnets are doing more work than the word “travel” suggests. They are what make chess possible on a porch in wind, in a car, on a train tray table, or on a couch where somebody is going to bump the board. WE Games specifically pitches it for outdoor play in windy weather, and that is the use case where a normal set simply fails. If you want more in this vein, our portable board games guide and our best mini board games list cover the wider category.
Who should skip it: anyone who wants their primary set to be this one. A 2.19 inch king on a 10.5 inch board is small for a long sit-down game, and magnetized pieces have a slight drag when you slide them that purists notice immediately. This is a second set, and an excellent one.
4. WE Games Solid Wood Checkers Set, 14.5 inch — the most underrated buy on this list
A solid hardwood 14.5 inch board with the traditional red and black checkers, 24 pieces, and recessed grooves around the border that the pieces sit in when the game is over. WE Games notes that teachers prefer sets like this because solid wood outlasts the cardboard ones, which is a quietly damning comparison and also completely true.
Checkers gets patronized because it is the game we all learned at six, and that reputation is unfair in a specific way. It is a genuinely sharp game of forced sequences — the mandatory-capture rule means a good player is constantly building positions where your only legal move is the one that loses you three pieces. It gets harder, not easier, as the board empties. Very few games that teach in ninety seconds have that property, and it is the same quality that keeps chess and backgammon on the table.
There is also a practical argument. This is the set to own if the household includes a child, a grandparent, or anyone who is not going to sit still for a chess game — a point our best board games for seniors guide keeps running into. The grooves matter as much here as the drawers do on the French Staunton, for exactly the same reason.
Who should skip it: anyone who already bought the French Staunton set, which includes checkers pieces and the same 64 squares. Buying both is buying the same board twice.
5. WE Games Leatherette Tournament Backgammon Set, 18 x 11 inches — the complete one
A tournament-sized backgammon set in a black leatherette briefcase with brass latches. The playing field is a soft velvety fabric with leatherette points sewn onto the surface rather than printed on it. It opens to 22.25 by 18 inches and closes to 18 by 11.125 by 2.186 inches with a handle, and everything stores inside.
Here is the specification that decides this category and that almost nobody checks before buying: the set includes 30 checkers, two felt-lined dice cups, four dice in two colors, and one doubling cube. The doubling cube is the piece cheap sets omit, and omitting it removes the best thing about backgammon. The cube is what converts a dice game into a game about judging your own position — you offer to double the stakes, and your opponent has to decide whether to accept or concede. That single decision is why backgammon survives while other roll-and-move games do not, and a set without a cube is selling you the worse game.
The felt-lined cups are the other detail worth naming. Backgammon is loud, and unlined cups make it louder; WE Games lines these specifically to cut the noise. If you are the household that plays after the kids are asleep, that is not a luxury feature.
Who should skip it: anyone who wants an object rather than a kit. Leatherette is practical and it is not beautiful. If the set is going on a coffee table where people will see it, the next one is the answer.
6. WE Games Natural Cork & Wood Backgammon Set, 19 inch — the one you leave out
Handmade using marquetry — the craft of applying veneer pieces to form a pattern — with a dark brown cork playing field, natural cork and grey inlaid points, olive wood checkers, wood veneer and cork on the outside of the case, and two natural wood dice cups. It closes to 18.63 by 11.63 by 3 inches and weighs 6.7 pounds.
The cork is not decoration. WE Games points out that the cork field makes each roll of the dice considerably less noisy, which is the same problem the felt-lined cups on the previous set are solving, addressed at the other end. Between the cork surface and the wooden cups, this is the quiet backgammon set, and the fact that the quiet solution is also the beautiful one is a genuinely nice piece of design. The 6.7 pound weight tells you the rest: this is a piece of furniture that happens to open.
Who should skip it: anyone taking backgammon out of the house. Nearly seven pounds of cork and olive wood is not a travel set, and the marquetry is worth protecting. Also skip it if you are buying your first backgammon set and are not yet sure the game will stick — start with the leatherette one and upgrade if it earns it.
7. WE Games Shoot The Moon, 17.5 inch — the one that is not a strategy game at all
Two metal rods, a metal ball, and a sloped board. You manipulate the rods to roll the ball up the slope toward you and drop it into the highest-scoring stage you can reach; open the rods too far and it drops early for fewer points. WE Games builds it from solid Malaysian oak with a walnut stain and a glossy finish, at 17.5 by 7 by 3.75 inches, and notes it first became popular in the United States in the 1940s. Some assembly is required.
We are including a dexterity toy on a list about ancient strategy games deliberately, because the reasoning that runs through this whole page cuts the same way here. Dexterity classics get dismissed for being classics rather than for being bad — the same unfair reflex that gets Jenga sneered at, when Jenga produces more genuine tension per minute than most games ten times its weight. Our games like Jenga list makes that case at length. Shoot the Moon is in the same family: no rules to teach, no downtime, and a coffee table is a legitimate place for a game to live.
Who should skip it: anyone expecting a game with decisions in it. This is a skill object, closer to a desk toy than to checkers, and it will not hold an evening on its own. It is a thing you walk past and pick up.
The sets compared
There is no player count or playtime column here, because these are physical objects rather than published games and those numbers do not exist. What does exist is size, material, pieces and storage — which is, conveniently, exactly what decides whether you keep using a set.
| Set | Size | Material | Pieces | Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| French Staunton Chess & Checkers | 15.75 x 15.25 x 2.75 in. | Camphor wood veneer, inlaid border | Weighted solid wood; 1.56 in. squares | Two felt-lined drawers |
| Triple Weighted Tournament Chess | Roll-up mat; 2.25 in. squares | Vinyl mat, plastic pieces | Triple weighted, 4 in. king, 3.8 lbs | Canvas carry bag |
| Magnetic Folding Travel Chess | 10.50 x 10.50 x 1 in. | Walnut veneer, felt-lined | 32 magnetized wood pieces, 2.19 in. king | Folds shut, pieces inside |
| Solid Wood Checkers | 14.5 in. board | Solid hardwood | 24 traditional red and black checkers | Recessed border grooves |
| Leatherette Tournament Backgammon | Closed 18 x 11.125 x 2.186 in. | Leatherette case, velvety field | 30 checkers, 4 dice, 2 cups, doubling cube | Latching briefcase with handle |
| Natural Cork & Wood Backgammon | Closed 18.63 x 11.63 x 3 in.; 6.7 lbs | Cork field, wood veneer, marquetry | Olive wood checkers, 2 wood dice cups | Case closes on itself |
| Shoot The Moon | 17.5 x 7 x 3.75 in. | Malaysian oak, walnut stain | Two metal rods, metal ball | None — it lives out |
What we would not buy
A backgammon set with no doubling cube. This is the single most common way to buy the wrong backgammon set. Check the contents list for the cube before anything else; without it you own a race game decided by dice, which is the version of backgammon that deserves its bad reputation.
An oversized decorative chess set you have no table for. A 19 inch board is wonderful and it needs a surface that will hold it permanently, because a board that size does not get set up and put away casually. If you do not have that surface, either buy the 15 inch version or read our guide to board game tables first and solve the actual problem.
A themed novelty chess set as somebody’s only chess set. They are great objects and they are bad boards, because the pieces are sculpted for character rather than for instant recognition, and you spend the whole game working out which knight is which. Own one as a second set, by all means.
A cheap set as a test of whether you like chess. This is the false economy on this page. An unweighted set that tips when the table is bumped is a set you play twice. If you are unsure, the magnetic travel set is a better hedge than a bad full-size one — it costs less, it survives, and it will still be useful after you buy the real board.
Which one belongs on your table
Buying one set for a household: the French Staunton chess and checkers set. Two games, one object, drawers.
Buying for someone who plays seriously: the triple weighted tournament set. It is unglamorous and it is correct.
Buying for a traveler, a camper or a commuter: the magnetic folding walnut set.
Buying for a mixed-age house: the solid wood checkers set. It is the one a six-year-old and a seventy-year-old can both start immediately.
Buying your first backgammon set: the leatherette tournament set, because it is complete.
Buying a backgammon set as a gift or a room piece: the cork and wood set.
If you would rather have a modern design that plays in twenty minutes, that is a completely reasonable preference and we cover it everywhere else on this site — our best two-player board games list is the direct answer, and our best strategy board games guide covers the heavier end. These three ancients earn their shelf space on different grounds: they never need explaining, they never go out of print, and they are the only classics where the upgrade is a better board rather than a better game. Our history of board games piece has more on how they got here, and our old school board games and vintage board games lists cover the nostalgia shelf around them.
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Frequently asked questions
What size chess set should I buy?
For a chess set you will actually use, match the king’s base to the board’s squares — the base should cover roughly three quarters to four fifths of a square. WE Games’ tournament set publishes both numbers, a 1.875 inch king base on 2.25 inch squares, which lands at about 83 percent. A 15 inch home board with 1.56 inch squares wants noticeably smaller pieces.
Are wooden chess pieces better than plastic ones?
Wooden chess pieces are better to own and plastic ones are better to play tournaments with. Wood looks and feels like furniture and survives decades on a shelf. Weighted plastic, like the triple-weighted pieces in WE Games’ tournament set, is what clubs actually use because it is heavier for its size, cheaper to replace, and it does not care about being thrown in a bag.
What is the difference between a tournament chess set and a decorative one?
A tournament chess set is built to a standard and a decorative set is built for a room. WE Games’ tournament set meets the World Chess Federation’s height, weight and proportion rules, uses a roll-up vinyl board with algebraic notation printed on it, and packs into a canvas bag. A decorative set optimizes for wood, inlay and a board you leave out.
Do I need separate boards for chess and checkers?
No. Chess and checkers are played on the same 64-square board, so one board covers both games and only the pieces differ. WE Games’ French Staunton set ships both sets of pieces with a drawer for each, which is why it is our top pick for a household that wants one object on the shelf instead of two.
What comes in a complete backgammon set?
A complete backgammon set needs 30 checkers in two colors, four dice in two colors, two dice cups and one doubling cube — the doubling cube is the piece budget sets quietly omit. WE Games’ leatherette tournament set includes all of it, with felt-lined cups that cut the noise, in a briefcase that closes to 18 by 11 inches.