Before Quake, before Doom, before Castle Wolfenstein came the ultimate combat game of them all — chess. It's still you against the computer, only instead of Uzis and bazookas it's queens and rooks as the weapons.

The recent match between Garry Kasparov and the chess computer X3D Fritz caught my attention. Years ago, probably on my first XT PC, I used to play Chessmaster 2000. The current version of that game, now from Ubi Soft, is Chessmaster 9000, and has an extensive package of features filling two CDs.

If you want to play chess against the computer, you have two basic options — the Game Room and the Tournament Room. In both, you can set the computer to different ability levels, based upon the established chess rating system, and personalities. The best of the computer opponents are based on famous grandmasters of the past; the weakest are represented by children, with about 150 different choices in between.

In the Game Room, there are a number of different features that we can euphemistically call "teaching aids", or ways to cheat the computer. There's Quick Hint to tell you the best move; the Blunder Alert to give you a second chance when you've made a bad move; the Chess Coach for more extensive analysis, and more. If you don't listen to their advice and make a bad move anyway, you can take back moves.

In the Tournament Room, all the help features are turned off. Here it is you against whichever AI opponent you picked. As you play games here, you start to establish a provisional rating, which will go up as you win and go down as you lose.

After awhile, you may get tired of getting kicked around by the computer. Then you can turn to some of the many teaching aids found in the Classroom, Library, and Database. The classroom includes tutorials, drills, quizzes, and explanations of chess openings. The library has classic games you can replay, and the Database has records of over 500,000 chess games that you can analyze in various ways. There's also a Kid's Room that's presents the game in a more simplified setting. Once you've felt you've learned enough, you can use the CMLive feature to play others over the Internet.

If you are an inexperienced chess player, you'll probably get value from this game. Is it a challenge for a good player? Frankly, I don't know because I'm not a good chess player. But it's not that expensive to see. If you are looking for a game to play on a computer, and you don't feel like blowing things up, Chessmaster 9000 is a good choice, especially if you are not afraid of being labeled a nerd. It may also be worth a shot as a Christmas present for a kid who hasn't yet gotten addicted to Grand Theft Auto or Quake. After all, if they've seen or read Harry Potter, they already know about Wizard's Chess.