At any given moment, there are only approximately a thousand chess Grandmasters that are officially recognized by the World Chess Federation or FIDE (for its acronym in French). This is the greatest title any competitive chess player can achieve, and once a player has obtained the rank of Grandmaster he or she has this title for life. The first Jamacian to become a chess Grandmaster was Maurice Ashley.

Ashley first became interested when he was a youngster growing up in Brooklyn, New York in the late seventies. Although he didn’t make the cut when he tried out for his high school’s chess team, he nonetheless honed his skills playing in tournaments and in the many informal games which take place all over New York City in parks and recreation centers. He then went on to play with two youth teams, the “Raging Rooks” and the “Dark Knights”, that would go on to win national championships in the early nineties. Ashley also coached chess to inner city youths during this time, and became somewhat of a spokesperson and advocate for what is undoubtedly the most esteemed of all mind sports.

By the mid nineties, Maurice Ashley was a popular and respected personality in the world of competitive chess. In 1995 he released the popular instructional CD-ROM ‘Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess’ . He also provided the commentary for high profile chess matches during this time. This included the commentary for matches of Grandmaster Gary Kaparov, the most well known of all chess Grandmasters and World Champions. These included Kasparov’s famous matches against fellow Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand and against ‘Deep Blue’, a supercomputer manufactured by IBM.

Not wanting to be known only as a coach and analyst, in 1997 Ashley once again entered the world of competitive chess. He won multiple tournaments at the highest level of play, and in 1999 at thirty three years of age he officially became a Grandmaster. Four years later, he was named Grandmaster of the Year by the US Chess Federation.

Over the past decade, Maurice Ashley has once again returned to focus on being an advocate for chess and chess education. Tow of his books – “Chess for Success” (2005) and “The Most Valuable Skills in Chess” (2009)- are widely regarded as being among the best instructional texts. His chess related videos on Youtube receive tens of thousands of views, as has the Ted-Ed talk he gave on ‘retrograde analysis’.

Extra Sources:
tinyurl.com/h3bzklb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v34NqCbAA1c

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmaster_(chess)