CHESS in America is having a crisis. There were no American contenders in the recent world chess championship tournament in San Luis, Argentina, which was limited to the world's top eight players. The closest American candidate for the tournament was Hikaru Nakamura - a 17-year-old who is ranked 42nd in the world. But Nakamura - who at 15 became the youngest American grandmaster, breaking Bobby Fischer's record - says that he might give up pro chess because there is so little money in it. Losing Nakamura would be devastating for American chess.

How can chess save itself? No doubt it would make purists protest, but chess should steal a few moves from poker. After all, in the past few years, poker has lured away many chess masters who realized that the analytical skills they've learned from chess would pay off in online card rooms.

And that's a shame. There are plenty of smart people playing poker (and I love playing it myself), but there's no denying that when it comes to developing mental acuity, chess wins hands down, so to speak. Dan Harrington, a former world poker champion who quit chess because there wasn't enough money in it, laments that poker is thin and ephemeral in comparison.

So here are some poker-inspired ideas for chess:

Teach it more. Web sites and TV programs that explain the rules of poker abound. Chess needs to do the same. Programs like Chess-in-the-Schools in New York and the American Foundation for Chess, in Seattle, are improving chess literacy by teaching the game to schoolchildren.

But there are very few opportunities for adults to learn the basics. Chess Web sites, like that of the United States Chess Federation, should include interactive tutorials on how the pieces move. Chess tournaments, which are now closed gatherings of devotees, should include more basic commentary and instruction.

Treat it as a sport. Poker players are now respected as athletes, and tournaments are covered as major sporting events, with extensive ESPN coverage. Why not chess?

Tournaments are adrenaline-fueled competitions, and top grandmasters lift weights and jog to prepare themselves for the pressure of clutch games. After a long chess game, I'm hungrier and more tired than I am after my cardio-kickboxing class. Funny, lively announcers can make the moves dramatic - and there's no question that chess is full of eccentric and engaging characters with made-for-TV stories. It's too bad that the matches that are most widely reported usually involve a grandmaster playing against a computer.

Make its tournaments more exciting. Poker tournaments, the center of the poker boom, are "knockouts," meaning that players are eliminated one by one until the champion has all the chips. Most chess tournaments are now arranged so that everyone keeps playing till the end, and whoever amasses the most points is champion.

As a result, the most important games are often played in the middle of the tournament, making the actual finish an anticlimax. For instance, at the world championship tournament in Argentina, the winner, Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, virtually clinched the world title a week before the event was over.

Organizers of the 2006 American chess championship, to be held in San Diego, are moving in the right direction. They plan to split the 64-player field into two tournaments, and on the last day, the two winners will face off in a match for the title, guaranteeing a thrilling finale. But they should go even further, and run the championship as a knockout.

Of course, there are limits to how much chess can, or should, learn from poker. A Chris Moneymaker can come out of nowhere to win a poker championship, but an unknown will never beat Topalov in a single game. Because there is no luck in chess, gambling at tournaments is unfeasible - after all, why would an amateur with no chance to win contribute to a chess pot?

Further, Internet chess cheating, already a problem because dishonest players can use sophisticated computer programs to decide their moves, would balloon out of control if money were at stake. (Online card rooms don't have the same problem, because poker computers are still too weak to dominate human opponents.)

But if more exciting tournaments lead to more television coverage, big sponsors and money will follow. While chess may not have poker's illicit glamour, it does enjoy a reputation as symbolic of intelligence and good taste. With a few tweaks, chess can compete with poker.

But we need to move fast before we lose a generation of chess talent. An average poker professional can earn six figures and become a television personality, but Nakamura, the biggest American chess hope since Fischer, cannot. To raise the stature of chess in America, we'll have to do what chess players are best at - calculate many moves ahead.

Jennifer Shahade, the United States women's chess champion in 2002 and 2004, is the author of a recent book about women in chess.