He became a chess grandmaster at the age of 26, kicking off a career which flourished throughout the 1950s and '60s. In 1956 he became the Soviet champion, and participated in the Soviet championship more than 20 times while pursuing a professional career as a concert pianist. A chess theorist whose name is memorialised in a number of signature chess moves, Taimanov went on to become a chess journalist. In another, unrelated loss for Russian chess, a 20-year-old grandmaster, Yury Yeliseyev, fell to his death Saturday from the 12th floor of a Moscow apartment building, the chess federation said. Yeliseyev was a Russian junior chess champion who reportedly also pursued the highly dangerous sport of parkour, which involves running, climbing and jumping through an urban environment.

Source: The Nation Bangkok November 28, 2016 15:45 UTC