Russian chess prodigy Yuri Yeliseyev dies in fall

Chess grandmaster Yuri Yeliseyev (not pictured), 20, died in a fall Saturday from the 12th floor of a Moscow apartment balcony, police said. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI

MOSCOW, Nov. 28 (UPI) — Russian chess grandmaster Yuri Yeliseyev, 20, died after falling from a 12th floor balcony of a Moscow apartment building, police said.

The chess prodigy, a world junior chess champion in 2012 and proclaimed grandmaster, the chess world’s highest rank, was attempting to reach another balcony when he slipped Saturday, colleague Daniil Dubov said. He was a practitioner of parkour, a game of urban physical challenge involving leaping across roofs and fences, and climbing walls and other man-made obstacles.

“Tonight my close friend died, an outstanding chess player and analyst, one of the most talented people I know, Yuri Yeliseyev. He was trying to climb from the window onto a balcony on the 12th floor but lost his grip,” friend and fellow parkour enthusiast Dobov wrote on Facebook, the BBC said.

Police said injuries on Yelisevey’s body were consistent with a fall.

Yeliseyev won the 2016 Moscow open chess tournament, and was ranked 42nd among Russian grandmasters and 212th globally among grandmasters.

Sergei Yanovsky, coach of the Russian national chess team, said Yeliseyev “was a very talented chess player, a very bright lad, he was always very popular in the team.”

“Yura always sought unusual methods in everything, he had a predilection for unorthodox solutions… this is a very heavy loss,” he added, using a nickname for Yeliseyev.

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