I just bumped GNU Chess to 6.1.0 in Gentoo (package games-board/gnuchess, optionally games-board/gnuchess-book). Since the change log advertised a new graphic mode using Unicode characters without showing pictures, here is something for you to see:

Default, non-graphic

Graphic mode (guake, default font settings)

Graphic mode (guake, font "Monospace 32pt", board only)

PS: The PNG images above were reduced by 54.13% , 12.98%, 16.61% in size by optipng 0.7.4 (package media-gfx/optipng).