Personalities / Maurice Ashley
I really have become very much a begin- ner to the game again. It’s been an amazing six or seven months, really looking at the game and trying to re-understand the game in fundamental ways. And I’ve come to realize—and I’m writing a book about it now—that we don’t know anything about chess. When I say “we” I'm talking about
lem is that we have no real scientific description of chess, because in order to do that you’d need a mathematical descrip- tion of chess. And for some reason, despite the fact that we have a coordinate system that looks for all the world geometric, we don’t use formulas in chess, we don’t have mathematical formulas that describe any-
… chess is an opportunity to go into another world …
even at the very highest level. From what has been revealed, what we have is sort of an approximate understanding of chess. Because we base chess on principles that are not valid all the time, and conflict with each other consistently. So, what hap- pens is that players get this deep personal understanding ... But in terms of articu- lating this understanding, we’re woefully far behind, because all we have are gen- eralizations, we have principles about two bishops being better than bishop and a knight. Often, but really not all the time. We have “rook on the open files,”—but wait—there are lots of times when you put your rook on a closed file because you’re trying to shut down the potential for it to be opened. So you have conflicting rules ... There’s a set of contradictory prin- ciples that buttress our understanding of the game, and yet somehow we’re sup- posed to play using those principles. What happened was, I gave a lot of thought to this comeback, and I thought like if I just played chess the way I’ve been playing chess, that I would not be able to compete with anybody, really. I would just come back as the player that I was, and try- ing to get back in form. And I’ve tried to understand chess in a deeper way than I had, and my strategy was, if I don’t rethink what I know, or I don’t come up with some- thing, then I’m just going to get my tail end handed to me. And so I just started think- ing about it, started inspecting things. I looked at things like the board. I looked at things like the chess pieces. I looked at things like the color of squares —their sig- nificance—and I came to see that pretty much everything that I understood about chess was based on false premises. For example, the chessboard is not really 64 squares. It’s 64 squares visually, but it doesn’t function as squares. It functions more as points than as squares ... So you actually don’t even need squares—you could play on 64 circles if you wanted to. It would be the exact same thing, there would be no change as long as everything is connected to each other. And so once I started there, started exploring more and more, I came to realize that the real prob-
thing about chess. The closest we come to geometry is things like the king inside the square of a passed pawn. You get inside the square to catch the pawn. But we’ve never had a mathematician attack chess and say, well, what are the mathematical principles buttressing the game? I’ve been having fascinating conversa-
tions with blind players because I’ve realized that the chessboard and the light and dark squares are really an illusion of color ... [Blind players] don’t see the col- ors and they don’t see the squares. But they have their own limitations as well because they have to use their sense of touch to play the game. One of the strik- ing things I’ve found talking to blind players is that they didn’t play blindfold chess. I just assumed that they would. But one person I spoke to, he was amazed —he was like, “blindfold chess—you mean like not even touching the board? That’s amazing!” And I was like, “yeah, but I do that, most players and grandmasters can do that,” and he said “well that's amazing man.” It's like wait a minute, dude, you’re
cally there’s a door in chess that’s going to be opened and will potentially take it away from where it is, and take it someplace else, hopefully more interesting, hopefully not too esoteric, but definitely illuminat- ing, and hopefully it will help to change my game in a practical way. But not just me, but everybody who reads about it.
Ashley held a summer camp in Balti- more that inaugurated a new long-term study about the effect of chess on cognitive skills. The study is jointly conducted by the University of Cambridge and Virginia State University, and is sponsored by a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Depart- ment of Education. Along with his business partner Dr. Teresa Parr, who holds a doc- torate in psychology, Ashley developed a curriculum which will be used in several Baltimore schools to teach up to 300 chil- dren, three times a week for the entire school year.
We have neuroscientists, we have psy- chologists, who are going to take a look to see if [chess is] the real deal ... If it does show this change in executive functioning, then it’s huge because it will be U.S. gov- ernment approved, and that’s a big list to be on—that kind of program—because a lot of schools choose whatever curricu- lum they use based on that list. And for this chess program to be on that list would mean that those people who want to use chess, and they find us on the list, they would buy our curriculum. Well, we at least need to see the results. it’s positive then it’s good,
If if it’s not,
then we’re not happy, and you know they’ll be looking for things to blame and my curriculum might be the first thing!
... we've never had a mathematician attack chess and say, well, what are the mathematical principles buttressing the game?
blind! That shouldn’t be amazing at all! You just see the image, right? But it’s interest- ing, you have to see the image to be able to play without seeing the image, and so most of them really need to touch those squares, to touch those pieces to get a feel for what’s going on—literally. Do you think this has an application to your own play, if you're competing again in tournaments? Absolutely. I hope so, that was the point of this from the beginning. I’ll hopefully be a better player as a result ... I think basi-
When you were down in Baltimore, were there some echoes of your own childhood, learning chess in a difficult neighborhood. Is it something that can help, not just executive function, but also a way of handling tough situations in your life? Well, Baltimore was quite an eye opener, because I’ve been in many “hoods” in the U.S. I grew up in the hood—I grew up in Brownsville Brooklyn. I grew up hearing gunshots every single night, drug dealers shooting at each other—I watched drug dealers on the street shooting at each
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