I’ll post this here, since although it is done for now, it could use some tweaking in the future, depending on the comments I get here.
It was made using cycles, and it started as an experiment with materials (using checkerboard pattern) and I thought I may as well try to do a whole chess set.
Feedback is welcome 
The image is a little dark, otherwise I think it is pretty spot-on. Looks good.
If the board doesn’t have the same slight reflection as the pieces do it probably should. Other than that I would agree that it needs a little more light.
Update:
Took into account what you have been saying. I have increased the environment lighting, changed the materials so they all have the same amount of shine and tweaked the table surface (though I’m still not sure that I like it):
Does it have an external light? If you only go with the environmental lighting, the scene will appear kind of boring. You really won’t get much, if anything, in terms of shadows or spec, which add more pop to the image. I have to say, it does look a bit better.
Added an external light, still not much shadow though. What do you think? Turn down environment lighting more and increase external light to get better shadow, or does it work as it is?
try and add a sun lamp so that you get good shadow…maybe you could also make a simple outdoor scene for it, like in America they seem to have chess sets in the middle of parks…
[edit]can we see the .blend?
I’m using cycles, and I’m not sure how you add a sun lamp in cycles?
And the blend file won’t seem to upload. It reaches 100% when I try to add it as an attachment, but then an error occurs and it will not attach.
hmm weird…in cycles add a normal lamp and then go into the lamp settings (where you find them in bi) and click use nodes. Next to where it says size, change from 1.0 to about .050 then just rotate like normal to get the shadow facing the way you want them to.
