In the chess game that is Illinois politics, it was check, but not mate, Thursday morning for House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, D-Chicago.

Madigan has decided to offer a helping hand because Gov. Jim Edgar is at odds with fellow Republican James "Pate" Philip, the Senate president, over a ban on assault weapons.

But a sputtering James Reilly, the governor's chief of staff, marched into a news conference to say that Madigan's help wasn't needed.

"Political games are not new, but what the speaker did today is beyond comparison in political gamesmanship," Reilly said.

Reilly's impromptu tirade came minutes after one of Madigan's committees approved a 200-page bill promoting safe neighborhoods in Chicago. The committee killed a part of the bill that would have banned assault weapons, and Reilly accused Madigan of pulling the strings.

Reilly said Madigan torpedoed a deal that Edgar's office had been working on with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and members of the House Judiciary II Committee. The agreement modified Edgar's proposed ban on some assault weapons so the plan would be more palatable to Senate Republicans, who approved a watered-down version last week.

The deal, Reilly said, was a compromise between what Edgar proposed in his State of the State speech in January and the weak Senate bill.

But an aide to Madigan, Steve Brown, responded coolly that the speaker was just giving the governor his wish and would deliver on a promise to have the House vote on Edgar's original proposal.