Einstein Electronic Chess Wizard

I was surprised and pleased to learn that my granddaughter was playing chess. Since no one else in her family does, I got her this electronic game. She reported to me that the game always told her her moves were illegal. This means she only THOUGHT she was playing chess, didn't know the moves, and wasn't about to be taught by a machine. A nice game if the user follows through.

There are problems with the product. For instance, I am about to make a move and the screen goes blank and it stops working or I get weird random symbols, such as lines and stars. So, I put in new batteries and the game starts over. I have had to change batteries about 3 times, about once every two games. And it goes from telling me where to place its side, such as "D7-D5" which makes sense to symbols that don't make sense and "08 05" What is 08 05 supposed to mean? I do not see instructions in the rule book, for what the screen symbols refer to. And if I make a move and am about to check the machine, then it switches sides and becomes my side. If white(me) is winning, the machine goes from being black to being white, and refuses to change. Maybe since it is a computer it is instructed to win rather than play chess, but it is confusing. The instruction manual is insufficient. The screen goes from letters and numbers to symbols and changes sides during the game. It is very frustrating. Also, more than once, I am about to make a move and the screen goes dark and it stops working alltogether.

I've seen this complaint about Excalibur's chess products online, after I experienced it myself. In my case, the H8 square was not working. So everytime a King side castling move needed to be done, the computer would not let me proceed. For those of you who are looking to buy this, the chess computer requires you to press (either the piece or your finger) on the starting square and the destination square, when a move is made. So when I say that a square does not work, I mean that the computer does not recognize a press on that square. I returned mine. DB Roth was kind enough to give me a refund even though I had passed the return date. Amazon paid for half of the cost to ship it back to them. So, I can't say I was very unhappy with the return process. Advice to future buyers of this product. Don't buy it. I was lucky that I found this problem on a square that is frequently moved from. It is quite possible that other sets would have problems on squares where moves are not made that often. You would not want to catch that after 3-4 months of owning the board, especially, if you are buying this to play casually once in a while. In my case, I bought this for my son to learn. After this experience, I decided to buy a more expensive chess computer - the Novag Aquamarine through Amazon. I will write a review of it once I receive it. I found one user having a similar complaint about one of the inexpensive chess computers from Saitech as well, and so I got cautious, and stayed away from them as well. The Novag Aquamarine does not have a single user review. I hope I am luckier this time. I say that because I have even seen a good review of one these chess computers say that they loved it even though the presses on the squares stopped working after the first two weeks. I'm sure I wouldn't love that. In the end, it looks like getting any of these chess computers is a bit of a gamble. I also considered buying an autosensory board, but decided against it. There is only one I could find, called the Novag Citrine that is $150 and is not available on Amazon. Although I have not seen any major complaints about it, I decided against buying it. These autosensory boards do not require presses, because the pieces have magnets and I suppose the square are able to pick up the magnets. This means there is more than one thing that can go wrong with these boards. In addition to a square going bad, it is possible that a magnet could fall off a piece or could lose it's magnetization. My main reasons for buying a chess computer :- 1. Keep my son away from using a computer for chess - keep him from straining his eyes. He already watches too much TV IMHO. 2. I'm not good at chess, I would like him to learn and grow up playing a worthy opponent from the get go. 3. He doesn't have to depend on me or my wife to be able to play chess. When he's with his friends, they don't really want to play chess.

I like the magnetic pieces to the game ;but it keeps shutting off but in other words its a great game for my husband. Just plese let me know which battery it takes so I can avoid the problem

It is nice and durable. The size is just right, and actually bigger than how it looked in the picture, which was a pleasant surprise. Easy to carry around and nothing to easily damage. I wish the magnetics was stronger so the pieces stay in place properly. Message sound quality is very poor. The unit is not very user friendly. And you can not use rechargable batteries, it seems. Because each battery is 1.2V instead of 1.5 in alkaline, the total of 4-batteries make enough difference in voltage for the unit to not work at all, even for a short time. So I suspect even with alkaline batteries they need to be very fresh before they stop working. All said, and with the low price, it is worth it. Just have to get used to its idiosyncracies.

My 11 year old son played this after he opened it for Christmas. He lost against the computer which is a good thing due to the fact that he can beat his teachers in chess without a problem. I believe this game will help advance his skill level. He states that "you have to press down kinda hard on each square for the pieces to register". I would def buy this again.

Got this game for Christmas, and we tried to play it to see how it works. It doesn't really work because it comes up with weird numbers and letters that I do not know what they mean. The instruction book doesn't tell you what they mean and the options that are available. We couldn't get it out of error messages displayed and had to keep resetting the machine. It changed sides and we didn't know it did because it was new and we never tried it before. The only thing I like about it is you can turn it off and use the pieces for a regular game to play with your family.

Great little game for the price. I thought maybe would be smallish but it wasn't. Good for traveling if needed and fun to just mess around with. Good buy.