Novag Citrine

[mhull]

Well, *my* Citrine does not have a wooden board. It does have a nice decal of a wooden board. So that's not really a big cost factor.

The 2Robot would e a lot more tempting if it had a means of connecting to a computer as does the Citrine.

Yesterday I saw a Citrine for the first time at a charity auction. It is a lot smaller and chintzier in person than on the internet. For some reason, I pictured it in my head as the size of the old Auto Response Board. The rest of the crowd wasn't very impressed either; it ended up going for the first bid at half the retail price.

Interestingly, I talked to others at the auction who would have bid double that for something that looked a little more prestigious, regardless of strength. There were plain old wooden boards and pieces that went for over $500! Sounds like a hole in the market to me.

Exactly. I would love to own a nice full size, real wood auto-sensory computer chess board. That kind of luxury commands $$ in and of itself as long as it's at least of expert strength. I would prefer something stronger than ARB. Strong expert to master range (2100-2300) with good variety of play would suit me.