Exclusive | Russia, once home to chess, now home-breaker: 'We can't play as a team, players changing federation'

NEW DELHI: Long before Russia emerged from the shadow of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the land was already a chess powerhouse. The clubrooms in Moscow and the grand tournament halls in St. Petersburg turned chess into something far greater than a mere pastime; the Soviet school of chess, as many enthusiasts can recall, was so meticulous and so deeply strategic that an aspiring player would board ships from faraway lands just to witness it firsthand, almost as if the game was woven into the very air they breathed. Players would learn Russian to decode the endless pages of chess theory and arm themselves with new strategies. A home to so many legends in the game of 64 squares, from Mikhail Botvinnik, Boris Spassky and Garry Kasparov to Vladimir Kramnik, is witness