Yes, chess fans, Garry Kasparov Teaches Chess is chock full of goodness. It's so deep it doesn't even come on a CD-ROM; it's packed onto a DVD. There are three hours of videos from the Great One talking chess, which is more than enough. It's got an analysis engine, statistical database, and comes with three free months of play at chess.com. It's packed.

But somewhere in the ambitious attempt to bring you everything you never knew you needed to know about the famous opening chess move called "The Queen's Gambit", the designers forgot to put a little effort into their delivery. This game is so hard to figure out it should be an illegal move.

As most even remotely interested chess players know, Garry Kasparov was an amazing chess player from about day one. Born in 1963 in then Soviet-controlled Azerbaijan, he took up the game at five years old. By the age of 7, he was a famous child prodigy. By age nine, he had started winning those "blitz" championships where you move as fast as you can against all comers – and he was beating adults. At 12, he was the reigning Soviet Junior Champion. He was the youngest ever World Chess Champion at 22, and he had a streak even Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong might envy – Kasparov never lost a match in 10 years. He battled to a draw IBM's "Deep Blue" supercomputer – programmed to analyze 50 million moves in 3 minutes. He was voted "Brain of the Year" in 1990. He's still #1 in the world, and he raises money for charity by playing entire chess clubs simultaneously, fifty matches at a time if he's in the mood. Known as "The Beast of Baku", his aggressive, never-say-draw style made him feared in chess circles. He retired this year, but not after lending his name to those who have decried Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "dictator."

Thus, a game backed by Kasparov has the bona fides, in spades. It features several different training videos, playable on your DVD, where Kasparov describes in detail the background of the famous Queen's Gambit opening and takes you through it's intricacies. Named for the first move of many tournament games, where white pushes forward the queen's pawn two spaces, the Queen's Gambit is a well-known opening that creates cutting lanes for bishops, prepares the king for a castling move into a solid defense, and allows the knights to come into play on both offense and defense. It also prepares the queen for action.

Over the years, many famous duels have begun with the Queen's Gambit. According to the literature, this game allows you to replay over 100,000 of those games at a speed of your choosing. I can't verify that; sorry. All I know is that you can select from a lot of games, whether from the 1900s with some of the old chess masters of yesteryear, or perhaps one of the young Bobby Fischer annihilations of Boris Spassky, the Soviet master toppled at Reykyavik while the world watched in 1972.

The problem, again, is the interface, coupled with a lack of documentation. What is needed, desperately, is some simple stuff. How do you get started? What are some simple things to do right off the bat? What features are available and how are they used? Instead of being guided, the game treats you like the large-brained Mensa-wannabe that you wish you were and makes you poke around until you figure something out. There are about a dozen pull-down menus strung across the top of the screen, and it's really hard to figure out what all of them do.

The manual is not very "beginner-friendly" and lost me while it reiterated features without explaining them. The online help is equally cruel, mostly pointing back to the website. A tutorial would have been nice, or some step-by-step instructions. But from the moment I had to restart my computer after the installation, which I hate, and after I saw the cheesy opening graphic (black and white suave-looking pseudo humans with chess-piece heads) I knew I was doomed. I guess, on the other hand, that I did feel very smart just for getting the game replays going after some intense exploration lasting an hour. After that, I was hooked. After a little while longer, I went looking for someone to cream.

For another example of interface "issues", my DVD-ROM had some kind of argument with the game, and I had to get the videos going by searching the DVD for .avi files. What a treat that was. I don't know if it needed it's own codecs or what.

Grumbling aside, this game can teach you everything you need to know about variations around the Queen's Gambit. There are so many off-shoots and side-tracks, that naturally only a computer could keep track of them all. With so much history at your fingertips, this is an awesome primer for anyone who knows a little chess. You can not only get a feel for how great Kasparov is, by watching a replay of his best matches, you can also take over at the end and finish off his opponent by not letting them resign. The game records your moves if you want it to, and so you can play, replay, and re-replay at length.

When opening by pushing the queen's pawn, the move is often matched, and thus the Queen's Gambit is accepted. When the opponent does not match the frenzied rush to the middle, the opening is termed "Queen's Gambit Declined." You'll see how that can turn into disaster when facing the computer. The analysis engine will pick you apart by bringing up more and more power as you fumble around trying to stop feints and tricks. You'll be trying to get things going on an ambitious attack, only to watch in dismay as your opponent sacrifices and exchanges until you don't even remember what you were trying to do. This kind of depth makes the title a well-rounded, and very, very deep game.

One intriguing thing I started to pick up on is that you begin to notice how human these grand chessmasters can be. They're not the robots you might think. All hell is breaking loose at the center of the board, and some dumb-ass pushes a pawn. Two moves later, he's tipping over his king. The times aren't recorded, and you like to hope that time pressure is what forced that stupidity into the open. Or a master will stumble into an exchange that leads to instant checkmate. Ouch! It would be pretty un-nerving to have your moves analyzed in depth like these masters. But if you've been playing at a high level since you were a kindergardner, I guess it's not so bad. It's a lot less scary than the thought of having thousands of people watching you try to figure out how to get this thing started.