Mephisto Travel Chess Let’s You Geek it up Anywhere

Ok, sure, Chess is pretty much known throughout the world as being a nerd’s game, but they’re just  jealous they don’t have the skills to best you in this classic game of strategy. With the Mephisto Expert Travel Chess computer by Saitek, you can bring the pummelling to them!

At first, you might blush at the $99.95 price tag. I know I would, but stick with me here for a moment. This isn’t your run of the mill chess board. The functionality to justify the price is definitely here too. It has  a wide variety of difficulty levels, so scrubs like me can get a challenge out of easy mode and the next Bobby Fischer will be taking on the ultimate expert program. If you’re tired of regular old chess, you can program your own search algorithm for customization!

Mulligans are allowed, thanks to the 50-move take back, and you can setup the pieces anyway you like to try out different positions and moves. There’s even an info mode that will happilly tell you why the computer is beating your ass at this game (I hope the voice explaining sounds like Hal from Space Oddysey 2001. “You can’t make that move, Dave.”) Even the pieces are well constructed out of silver and pewter. Pewter is serious business, and they fit nicely into the pieces storage area for safekeeping. There’s even an automatic power down feature in case you forget to turn it off. Which is good, because although it is just shy of a hundred buckaroos, batteries are still not included.

Looking for some other pieces of chess fun? Well we seem to have a lot of Star Wars lego chess sets to go around. Alternatively, if you’re having trouble finding someone to play with, we have you covered with some Robochess.