Mark Evgenievich Taimanov, born 7 February 1926, is a Soviet, and then Russian chess player and pianist.

He was born in Kharkov, Ukraine, into a Jewish family. His mother was a piano teacher who led him to the world of music. He moved to St. Petersburg with his family at the age of six. He played the role of a young violinist at the age of 11 in the 1937 Soviet film Beethoven Concerto.

He received the International Grandmaster Title in 1952 and played with the Grandmasters in Zürich in 1953 where he tied for the eighth place. Between 1946 and 1956 he was considered to be one of the best ten players in the world and according to the Chessmetrics his highest rating is 2742. He participated in the Soviet Chess Championship on 23 occasions that is a record (Only Efim Geller could achieve the same). He lost the pairing based match against Mikhail Botvinnik in 1952 but defeated Yuri Averbakh and Spassky as well in the Candidates battle in 1956. Probably one of his most known matches was the unfortunate defeat he suffered from Fischer (0-6) in 1971 in the Candidates Championship. However, only a few people can say that they defeated six World Champions: Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky and Karpov were beaten by Taimanov.

Following the defeat he suffered from Fischer the Soviet leadership felt quite embarrassed and, as Taimanov claimed in an interview in 2002, thought it would be impossible that a Soviet player could suffer such a bad defeat from an American without any political reasons. The Soviet Officials withdrew Taimanov’s salary and did not allow him to travel overseas anymore. The official reason for Taimanov’s punishment was that he brought a book into the country by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Soviet leadership later revoked the sanctions against him probably because Fischer beat Bent Larsen (6-0) as well in 1971.

Several opening variations were named after him within the Sicilian Defence, the Modern Benoni and the Nimzo-Indian Defence. He has written some books, two of which are about the variations named after him and he summarized his best games in an autobiography.

Taimanov was a leading concert pianist in the Soviet Union. They formed a piano duo with his first wife, Lyubov Bruk and some of their performances were included in the Philips and Steinway series Great Pianists of the 20th Century.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org; http://www.chessmetrics.com