Yuri Yeliseyev, Russian Chess Grandmaster, Dies in Fall in Moscow

Twenty-year-old Russian chess grandmaster Yuri Yeliseyev fell off a 12th floor balcony in Moscow on Saturday night and died from his injuries.

The chess champ lost his grip and fell from the balcony on Moscow’s Pyatnitskoye Avenue, which contains many high-rise buildings. BBC News reported Yeliseyev was engaging in parkour, an urban game that involves climbing and leaping on roofs, fences or other obstacles, when he fell.

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

According to police, UPI reported, Yeliseyev’s injuries were consistent with a fall from that height.

Yeliseyev played on the Russian national chess team, where coach Sergei Yanovsky said he was talented and popular.

“Yura always sought unusual methods in everything, he had a predilection for unorthodox solutions ... this is a very heavy loss,” Yanovsky said about Yeliseyev, UPI reported.

Yanovsky also said Yeliseyev liked to climb and was daring “even as a young boy,” the BBC reported. “But he didn’t (typically) go to extremes,” Yanovsky said.

Yeliseyev became the world junior chess champion in 2012 and achieved the rank of grandmaster at age 17. He won the recent Moscow Open 2016 tournament and was ranked 42nd of all Russian grandmasters and 212 in the world.

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