Jose Tavarez brought the street smarts of New York City to a battle Sunday with a Soviet foe. The contest between the 15-year-old Harlem resident and Moscow teen-ager Andrei Krasavin last just 15 minutes. Krasavin took a last look at the chessboard and resigned, the victim of an unusual program to teach New York students English through the ancient game. Tavarez and his schoolmates, however, have enjoyed only mixed success in their chess matches in the chess-worshiping Soviet Union, homeland of world champion Garri Kasparov. ``The first day they played, they were sort of destroyed,'' said William Hall, their English teacher and chess mentor. The 11 students from Junior High School No. 99 in East Harlem, a crime- and drug-plagued area of Manhattan, came to the Soviet Union for two weeks to challenge counterparts at their favorite game. The trip was masterminded by Hall, who teaches English through chess to 40 pupils from Puerto Rico, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Hong Kong and other countries. The students belong to his ``Royal Knights'' chess club. ``I saw that kids who were having difficulty learning were intrigued by chess,'' said 52-year-old Hall, who has been teaching for 23 years. ``The motivation was so great that they improved their English faster.'' ``Do they have an egghead-nerd image?'' Hall asked. ``The answer is no, with a capital `N.' They play baseball, soccer, street hockey, and their drive to excel in chess carries over.'' The New Yorkers, clad in sneakers and blue jackets with their club's name, met their Soviet opponents Sunday at Pioneer Palace, a children's recreation center in Moscow's Lenin Hills. In a third-floor classroom used to teach the game to budding grandmasters, the Americans sat down at brown wooden tables inlaid with chessboards to test themselves against some of the Soviet capital's best young players. Previous showings by the Royal Knights, who arrived in Moscow April 10 and had played at the Spartak and Central Soviet chess clubs, ranged from disastrous to encouraging. ``The Russians know clever moves that we don't, and that gives them control of the center of the board,'' said Tony Pagan, 15, whose parents are from Ecuador. Tavarez, a club member of Puerto Rican origin who has played chess for only seven months, was one of the winners Sunday. ``He wants to take on the best,'' Hall said. ``On the way over here, his question was, `Does (Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev play chess?''' However, Avram A. Pismenny, trainer for the Pioneers chess club, said the Americans had studied the game less than his players. The tour began to take shape last year, when the Royal Knights placed 17th in a national scholastic tournament. Two club members playing at the Manhattan Chess Club met the women's champion, Maya Chiburdanidze of the Soviet Union, who suggested they visit her country. It took 11 months of planning and fund raising, as well as $20,000 in corporate sponsorship to make the idea a reality. The group was scheduled to leave Moscow on Monday for Eshera, a resort on the Black Sea. They will spend three days there, travel to Leningrad to visit that northern Russian city and play more chess, then return to New York on April 24.
