This is an amazing little chessboard. The 3D pieces are beautiful and distinguishable. It does matter how you Orient them. Just a little tip. I like to keep the knights at a 45° angle, And you turn the bishops so the Gap is facing you. You do those two things and this tiny little board punches way outside its weight class. You can store all the captured pieces on the board so clean up takes literally 1 second. You can pick it up, shake it, throw it up and down, open it back up and the pieces will not have moved. This is the best travel chess board you can buy.