The rivalry between two chess players turned almost deadly when one player was accused of poisoning a game board with liquid mercury.
The rivalry between two chess players in Russia took a bizarre turn when one of them was accused of poisoning a game board with liquid mercury, making her opponent sick.
The suspect, chess player Amina Abakarova, 40, was captured on surveillance video taking something out of her bag and then smearing a substance on a chess board and the table at the beginning of a tournament event in Russia’s Dagestan on August 2, according to the state-run outlet Russia Today.
Abakarova then began playing against her opponent, Umayganat Osmanova, 30, but Osmanova started feeling sick about 30 minutes into the match.
Osmanova, who had seen tiny silver beads on the table, felt nauseous and dizzy, and had a metallic taste in her mouth.
“In the first minutes, I felt a lack of air and a taste of iron in my mouth”, she told Russia Today. “I had to spend about five hours on this board. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t seen it earlier.
