Obituary: Mark Taimanov

Mark Taimanov, a virtuoso pianist and former Soviet chess champion whose lopsided loss to Bobby Fischer in 1971 in the quarterfinals of a major chess tournament cost him his government salary, has died, aged 90.

Taimanov became one of the leading Soviet players after the second World War, when the Soviet Union dominated world chess – all while pursuing an equally successful career as a classical pianist, known for performing duets with his wife, Lyubov Bruk.

In 1953, he was among 15 participants in a tournament in Zurich that is widely considered one of the greatest chess competitions ever held.

The event, called the Candidates tournament, which determines a challenger for the world championship, included two future Soviet world champions, Vasily Smyslov and Tigran Petrosian, and one former champion, Max Euwe, of the Netherlands. Smyslov won the tournament, while Taimanov finished in a tie for eighth with his fellow Russian Alexander Kotov.

Taimanov qualified for the tournament again in 1971, but in the quarterfinals he faced Bobby Fischer, the brilliant American who was at the height of his powers.

The match, in 10 games, was to be decided by whoever got to 5.5 points first, with wins counting as 1 point and draws as a half point. Fischer beat Taimanov 6-0, without even yielding a draw.

It was an unheard-of result, and to the Soviet authorities, the only explanation had to be a nefarious one, so they blamed Taimanov. They barred him from travelling abroad, censured him and cut off his government salary, which all elite chess players received.

“This dramatic match changed my life into hell,” Taimanov said in an interview with Joel Lautier, a French grandmaster, on the chess news website Chessbase.com in 2002.

His internal exile lasted only two years, however, partly because of Fischer’s continued success. After beating Taimanov, Fischer overpowered Bent Larsen, a Danish grandmaster who was ranked among the top four in the world. He then vanquished Petrosian. Finally, in 1972, he wrested the world title away from the powerful Russian Boris Spassky.

The sheer dominance of Fischer made it plain to the Soviet authorities that Taimanov’s poor outing against him had not entirely been the Russian’s fault. They reinstated his benefits and allowed him to travel again.

But he never got another shot at the title because he never again qualified for the Zurich Candidates tournament. And perhaps as a consequence of the sanctions against him, his marriage to Bruk ended as well, as did their musical partnership.

They had met while studying at the Leningrad Conservatory and married when they were both 19. Soviet regulations virtually prohibited married couples from travelling together in the West, however, so they remained relatively unknown outside the Soviet bloc.

But when Philips Classics put together its “Great Pianists of the 20th Century” series, which included 200 compact discs, the Taimanovs were the only duo in the set.

Mark Evgenievich Taimanov was born in 1926, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and moved to Russia when he was six months old. His father was a passionate chess player, and his mother taught piano at a conservatory in Ukraine. She also taught her son to play.

Music played a role in Taimanov's introduction to chess. When he was 11, he was cast as the boy violinist in a movie called Beethoven's Concerto, turning him into a minor film star in the Soviet Union and prompting an invitation to join the Zhdanov Palace of Young Pioneers in Leningrad, one of many youth organisations springing up in the Soviet Union. When its director asked Taimanov what he wanted to study, he replied, "Chess." (For the movie, he had also learned how to hold and play the violin. In Leningrad he came under the tutelage of Mikhail Botvinnik, the future world chess champion, and became a formidable player. He was awarded the international master title in 1950 and two years later became a grandmaster, the highest title in chess, when he qualified for the Candidates tournament.

Altogether, he played in 23 Soviet championships, a record he shared with Efim Geller.

Taimanov often said in interviews that one of his most cherished possessions was a photograph that showed him playing in the Capablanca Memorial tournament in Havana in 1964. Behind him, just over his left shoulder, is the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, who is staring intently at the game.

Taimanov said that he and Guevara became friendly and played chess together several times.

In his 60s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he played more tournaments than in his best years; and he won the World Senior Championship for over-60s in both 1993 and 1994. At the age of 87, he launched a St Petersburg academy for young talents, and in December last year, at 89, he played a four-game match in Zurich against Viktor Korchnoi, then 84. At 173 years, it was the oldest combined total for a match between two grandmasters.

Discussing his dual careers, Taimanov saw a similarity in his approach to both. “I conceive chess first and foremost as an art,” he said in the 2002 interview, “and when I play chess, I try to do so as an artist.”

Taimanov was married four times, the last time in his late 70s. He was 78 when he and his fourth wife, Nadezhda Bakhtina, had twins, Misha and Dimahad.

– New York Times syndication