Teimour Radjabov broke onto the world chess stage as a teenager, earning the grandmaster title just after his 14th birthday and scoring a stunning win against Garry Kasparov as a 15-year-old in Linares 2003, the first time in seven years Kasparov had lost a rated game with the white pieces. That game was also symbolic, as Radjabov was born in the same city as the “Beast from Baku” and grew up playing the same hyper-aggressive openings that Kasparov had championed in his youth.

The young star from Azerbaijan struggled, however, to live up to his early promise. He gradually lost his reputation for aggressive chess, complained about his tournament invitations being restricted by Kasparov and, despite spending many years in the Top 10, one of his few major individual tournament victories had been sharing first place in Wijk aan Zee 2007.

In the run-up to the 2013 Candidates Tournament in London his rating crept up towards 2800 and some considered him a dark horse to win the event. It wasn’t to be, as a lack of match practice took its toll and Radjabov posted perhaps the worst performance of his career – suffering seven defeats and losing over 30 rating points.
Teimour largely seemed to drift away from top-level chess after that, but in 2019 he suddenly emerged again to win the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk, beating Ding Liren in the final after crushing the dreams of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the semi-final. That meant Radjabov would get another shot at the Candidates in 2020.

In a strange twist of fate, however, it was Maxime who began the Candidates after Teimour refused to play the event over concerns about the recently emerged coronavirus. Teimour was vindicated by events as the pandemic swept the world during the first half of the tournament in Yekaterinburg, Russia, until it was halted at the halfway mark when Russia was on the brink of shutting down air travel.

There looks to be no way back for Teimour into the 2020 (2021) Candidates, but a place in the next Candidates may be his as compensation. Meanwhile he became an enthusiastic streamer with his own YouTube channel as the chess world moved online.