Here is my final scene. Not to good at the lighting but not bad for my first attempt. Also the grey in the marble isn’t as dark as I wanted it but it might also be the lighting dulling it out. Went for some fancy wood looking something or other for the black squares.
Here are the Pawns.
The Bishops
The Rooks
The Knights
The Queens
The Kings
Well that is it. They are pretty simple but I tried to make them a bit unique with the colors. Enjoy
I liked!
Just try lowering the light intensity a bit. 
How did you set the lights?
Good question, I added a few lamps but I think in the scene I had two hemi lamps at like .3 something for intensity and then a sun lamp at 1.0 intensity. Not sure what I was really going for and that is probably part of the problem. I did’t have an idea in my mind and got kinda restless and just kinda said good enough and moved on in the lectures. Also I got kinda lazy with the materials I was using. I wanted the white on the black pieces to glow a bit so I turned up the emit value and then I used the same material on the white pieces which makes them a bit on the “glow-y” side of things. I am trying to get a jump on a college course that starts next week for 3D modeling. I started this course about a month ago but haven’t gotten as far into it as I had hoped to so I decided to move on to get as far as I can before I have to also start learning Maya.
There’s no need for two hemi lamps, one at 0.6 would be the same as two 0.3.
I don’t know if Blender Render deal with glow very well, Cycles would be better to achieve this result I think.
I liked the crosses you made for the kings. 
Good luck on your studies!