Vugar Gashimov was born on July 24, 1986, in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan,and learned to play chess when he was 6 from his father, an army colonel.

Mr. Gashimov quickly showed promise. He won the silver medal in the under-10-years-old division at the World Youth Championships in Minorca, Spain, in 1996, became an international master in 1999 and earned the top title of grand-master in 2002.

Together with Mr. Radjabov, 26, and Mr. Mamedyarov, 28, Mr. Gashimov formed the nucleus of a formidable team, and Azerbaijan became a perennial challenger for the gold medal at international team championships, including the biennial Chess Olympiads in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008.
Mr. Gashimov also had some individual successes, winning the Cappelle la Grande tournament in France in 2008, tying for first in the first Grand Prix tournament in Azerbaijan, in 2008, and winning the Reggio Emilia tournament in Italy in 2010-11. His world ranking peaked at No. 6 in November 2009, and he was ranked No. 10 as recently as January 2012, before health problems caused him to stop playing.
News of his death brought a flood of condolences and comments on Twitter. Hikaru Nakamura, an American who is currently No. 6 in the world and is competing in the Tata Steel tournament in the Netherlands – the same tournament that was Mr. Gashimov’s last, in 2012 – wrote: “A very creative and exciting player whose games (especially in theBenoni) will not be forgotten.”

Vugar Gashimov, a chess grand-master from Azerbaijan, who was one of the world’s top players for a decade and who helped lead his team to the gold medal in the European Team Chess Championship in 2009, died on Friday, January 10th, 2014 in Germany, where he had reportedly been receiving treatment for a brain tumor. He was 27.