Rizal Chess Set made for Travel only In 1882, on his first trip out of the country, he played

chess with his fellow passengers on the good ship Salvadora. He had his own chess set. Every square had a hole in the center. Every piece had a peg at the bottom. One played by sticking a piece into a hole . Chess was at the periphery of Rizals sensibilities as a novelist. In the Noli Me Tangere, theres a game between Crisostomo Ibarra and Capitan Basilio. The Salvadora took him to Singapore, where he transferred to the good ship Djemnah. He must have played chess aboard the Djemnah as it sailed the Indian Ocean to Punta de Gales. In 1888, he played chess with fellow passengers on the train from San Francisco to New York. None of the moves of any of those shipboard or trainboard games seems to have been recorded.