I want to make a public chess table, with every piece tied down securely so it cannot be stolen. Each of the pieces have attached one arbitrarily long thin steel cable, with one end in the side of the piece's base, and the other end joined to the table. I can design and drill the table/pieces to my liking.
This would amount to 2x16=32 initial pieces, plus for simplicity's sake (as if it wasn't complicated enough) four promotion spares for each player: one queen, one knight, one rook and one bishop.
This array of 40 cables is of course a mess. As the players make moves, they will face many cables being tangled.
I cannot find theory that relates to this particular design problem. My question is, how should I design the cable placement and general table/pieces system so that tangles are minimized?