A Master Shares His Skills On How to Save the King

Everyone used to love to play chess with me. I boosted other players’ confidence, made them feel good about their game.

Some people don’t do well with math, some can’t learn foreign languages and still others flop at arranging the furniture in a pleasing manner. I can’t play a decent game of chess. I have never won a game. Never.

Which is why I was particularly interested in “Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess,” a new CD-ROM from Davidson & Associates, a Los Angeles-based software company that specializes in educational products for kids, including its well-known “Math Blaster” series.

I liked the idea of being coached by Ashley, a player of international master rank who does not fit the aloof-chess-genius stereotype. In his television commentary on a 1994 match, Ashley put a mistake by world champion Garry Kasparov in perspective by saying, “For him to have missed this move is like Michael Jordan missing a layup totally open under the basket.”

The CD-ROM begins with Ashley demonstrating--via animation, computer graphics and commentary--the basics of the game. For each chess piece, the CD-ROM provides lessons on how it moves and its particular values. For example, Ashley warns against treating pawns as lowly, expendable workhorses. “Beginners often toss them away like pennies. Grand masters cuddle them like newborn babies,” he says in his on-screen commentary.

Ashley then takes you through a series of drills designed to get you more familiar with the capabilities of each piece. These exercises, which become more complex as you progress, are highly entertaining, even for those of us who are chess-challenged. And Ashley has a way of making the game seem not only exciting, but noble.

At one point, he describes chess as, “life and death, victory and defeat, the heights of ecstasy and the depths of despair, all in 64 squares.”

He then takes you through a series of strategy exercises aimed at teaching you to plan ahead to force your opponent into checkmate (a term, Ashley notes, derived from the Persian for, “the king is dead”).

To do all the drills provided on the CD-ROM would probably take several days, if not weeks. The CD-ROM also includes move-by-move re-creations of several historic matches between chess greats, with commentary by Ashley.

At any point, though, you can break off from the tutorials to try out your new skills in matches against the computer. For those of us who are terrible at the game, this is the weakest part of the CD-ROM.

This real-game simulation is where I really needed Ashley’s coaching, even when the game was set to the “easy” mode. I needed a coach to be watching over my shoulder, explaining why a move I’m contemplating was wise or short-sighted.

This kind of personal coaching is simply not practical for a CD-ROM, but if you’ve already got a human coach or are doing all right on your own, the Ashley CD-ROM provides a cool tool with which to sharpen your skills and learn more about the game.

“Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess” is in the Windows format, and costs about $35.

* Cyburbia’s e-mail address is David.Colker@latimes.com.