Very nice work. I like the DOF.

great work here , the textures and cameras focal view add the realizm, well done.

Don't do it! he'll get your queen AND checkmate!

This is a fabulous, fabulous render - and meaningful thought behind it. Thanks for this wonderful work.

looks good and the idea is great! My compliments!!

Very nice work, I really like the scene and the image. But in my opinion (the famous 2ct.) there are some things that could be improved: - give the squares (especially the white ones) of the chessboard different textures - rotate the background or the camera to avoid the "black block" behind the hand - move some chessmans more from center of the squares (especially the white knight in front) as it's now - the white castle most in front, seems to be floating, I'm not sure why, but perhaps it's the combination of the point of view and the position of the main light, perhaps some repositioning of camera or light or castle would help - if the wood could be made more rough (give more structure or bumbiness to the surface, and align it with the texture) it would be more impressive

I can only agree with that, MSpranger. I also have to rotate either the chess board or the table cloth, because as it is now they are strictly parallele. I hope I'll find time to improve this soon, the main problem being that this scene makes my machine crash regularly. But I don't lose hope. Thanks for that comment. It is one of the rare ones that I can considere 'helpful for improvement'.

Just too bad that those figures are called castles instead of towers in english. But the allegorical meaning gets across anyway. I started thinking immediatlely how far the allegory carries... Who made the first move? If we stick with the allegory we even get an answer to that: its always the white side that starts to move its pawns forward. Really nice idea.

Ok, I fixed it a bit. It is still far from perfect but thanks to MSpranger the first white castle is not floating anymore (just had to rotate it a little so that now the shadow is visible) and I changed the background picture. I'll try to take more time later to improve more. Other comments are still very much welcome.

(As long as someone else brought it up: real chess players call them "rooks" in English, although the move where the king can be moved to the other side of the rook is still called "castling".) This is a great picture just the way it is: a relatively simple position where White is giving up a killer advantage in exchange for (extremely!) short-term gain. I see it more as an allegory for modern business philosophy than anything -- the devil with establishing long-term customer and employee loyalty: concentrate only on improving next quarter's "bottom line". Then they wonder why they fail. Great idea, well rendered!

Nice render, I don't care for your political drivel though.

@RealityCheck: Well, my dictionaries gave 'castle' and 'rook' as a translation for 'der Turm', 'la tour', or 'la torre', but I chose the one that sounded the closest to a building. Now, the day I want to do a business allegory, I will chose Poker or Monopoly. Chess is a wargame. @welcomesite:It's always conservatives who don't care about politics. They just let things happen and then pretend there was no other way.

This makes me think about two of my favorite books: "The Art of War" and "The Prince," both of which are extremely useful in games of all sorts.. 'To assemble armies and put them into dangerous situations is the business of generals.' Better have the big picture, eh?

yepp, feelings of both war and translation dilemmas... we call the pawns Farmers in sweden. we also call the rook/castles for Towers. we call the bishops Runners :)

In French, the Bishop is called "Le fou", which means the Jester, but also "the mad man".

Fabulous as always. The meaning is clear and appreciated.

As an avid chess player I can relate to this image. What an apt analogy for so many things right now. Well done!

And if you really want to, the white Queen can be an old gift from France, one that the white player is quite ready to sacrifice.