Nuts... can I say I'm not keen on it if I say why? First off, I think you could improve it dramatically by picking a better position for the camera. as it is, the POV makes me uncomfortable. I also suggest working on some more interesting models for the chess peices, at the moment, they're fairly generic, confusing and not very attractive. I like the board, but the edge could do with being different from the center, maybe it could be clearly wood and use some of the procedural wood textures at the moment it's too similar to the tiles to be interesting. While the textures on the peices show the lighting, it's not actually very nice. I think you could do with turning down the relection on the board and making better use of a three point lighting system to give you some decent shadows as well. The background is murky, so there I suggest something less grey, maybe just a clean black.

I think the simple look is nice, and the pov is ok, altho you could move it to the left a bit (you cut lots out) but its not bad... keep it up, cant wait for the final... :)