Maurice Ashley (born March 6, 1966) is a Jamaican and American chess player, author, and commentator.

He got more serious about chess during high school, where he grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and played in parks and clubs throughout New York City.

[10] On March 14, 1999, Ashley beat Adrian Negulescu to complete the requirements for the Grandmaster title.

[11] In September 1999, Ashley founded the Harlem Chess Center,[4] which has attracted such celebrities as Larry Johnson[12] and Wynton Marsalis.

In 2007, Ashley returned to his birth country of Jamaica and became the first GM to ever participate in a tournament there, the Frederick Cameron Open.

After sweeping a field consisting of several of Jamaica's top players, Ashley was upset in the final round by Jamaican National Master Jomo Pitterson.

Starting in the Fall of 2012, Ashley was a Director's Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and, between 2013 and 2015, Maurice was also a Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society in a joint fellowship at both Harvard's Berkman Center and the Media Lab at MIT.

[16] In February 2016, a video of Ashley defeating a "trash-talking" amateur chess player in Washington Square Park went viral.

He was one of the commentators of the two matches between world champion Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue that took place in 1996 and 1997.