I wanted to catch the gist and intent of the original, so I kept the diagonal position of the board. I played with different shooting heights and found a lower postion was more pleasing and showed more of the contrast in the men which was the original challenge.
I had the advantage of owning a nice glass crystal chess set and shot it in a light box I made with with some flouresent twist bulb lamps. I tried quite a few different lighting positions which combined with the different camera heights meant I took over 50 shots. I think the black background made for a nice empty space.
This was the most editing I've ever done in photoshop. I adjusted temperature, shadows, contrast, burned, selective exposure, sharpened and cropped a bit. All in all a pretty good learning experience.
This was one of the comments on the original "...rework this photo and I think you could have a winner!" I hope so.
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Definite improvement over the original. I wish your composition were different - it feels like the board is too far at the bottom with too much negative space at the top right. great job in controlling the glare and getting a nice clean background.
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