During the Soviet era, chess tables could be seen in every Russian or eastern European park, with dozens of players lost in concentration. Cheap and egalitarian, chess became the Soviet Union’s leading "sport" of the mind, producing more champions than any other nation on earth. Celebrities at home, they traveled the world. And yet, just 25 years later, chess has been nudged almost into the margins of ex-Soviet society -- by nakedly mercenary poker.
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