Documented path
Born in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1987, Teimour Radjabov started playing chess at age three, coached by his father Boris Sheynin, a Jewish petroleum engineer who attended the same chess school in Baku as Garry Kasparov. His mother was an English teacher. He won the European Under-10 in 1996 and 1997, Under-12 in 1998, and the European Under-18 in 1999 at age 12, competing against much older players. He earned his Grandmaster title at 14, the second-youngest ever at the time. At 15, he stunned the chess world by defeating Garry Kasparov at the Linares tournament, becoming the youngest player ever to beat the world No. 1.
Born in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1987 to a petroleum engineer father who attended Kasparov's chess school; started chess at age three.
Azerbaijani chess grandmaster; won 2019 FIDE World Cup; active elite player; peak rating 2793 (world No. 4).
Where the conditions came from
Each is placed on a −1 to 3 scale from documented evidence, and the three are never added together. A combined total would rank Teimour Radjabov against other people. Held apart, they explain why this path ran differently from another one—which is the only comparison this project supports.
The marble itself
+3Tailwind
What capability, drive, or early skill is documented in the person rather than their surroundings?
Earned Grandmaster title at 14 (second-youngest ever at the time) and became the youngest player to defeat world No. 1 Kasparov at 15 — a rare chess prodigy.
Where it was dropped
+2Tailwind
What money, family standing, network, or permission was already in place before the work began?
Father Boris Sheynin was a strong chess player who attended the same Baku chess school as Kasparov and left his job to dedicate himself to Radjabov's training, representing significant family investment and domain knowledge.
The shape of the track
+2Tailwind
What place, timing, institution, or peer group made the next step available?
The Baku chess tradition, shared with Kasparov, provided a deep chess culture; father's full-time coaching and later mentorship from Zurab Azmaiparashvili provided strong developmental support.
A −1 is a documented headwind, not a missing value; a 0 means the sources record nothing notable either way. Annotation confidence: High. These are analyst readings of what the sources record, not measurements of merit, talent, or effort. The twenty-two scored dimensions remain available inside the deeper research detail.
What moved through the conditions
This records repeated behaviour or recovery described by sources; it is not a grit or merit score.
This is an unchosen opening or condition in the record, not an estimate of how much luck caused the outcome.
Strongest documented signals: Parent / family domain, Elite institution pipeline, Frontier geography.
Describes the starting position, not what the person later made of it.
Strongest observed levers: Prior reps, Scarce skill depth, Concentration intensity.
Measures what was present, not whether it was inherited, earned, self-built, external, or mixed.
The timeline below shows the sequence of work and transitions around the selected early milestone. It is evidence of a path, not proof that every step was necessary.
Dominant figure at the top of a field. The tier summarizes documented career recognition through the data cutoff—not Teimour Radjabov's worth or future potential.
Question four · where did the leverage come from?
Each non-zero lever gets a best-supported origin, evidence signals, and confidence. Unresolved is the honest default when the biography cannot distinguish self-built, advantage-enabled, earned, external, or mixed.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
A structural wave is external to the person, even when their position improved access to it.
This is a bounded inference from the current annotations—not a claim about private effort, merit, or the percentage of Teimour Radjabov's outcome attributable to any origin.
Structural luck, Encounter luck, Event luck, Outcome variance can change every arrow in the path. This successful-only dataset cannot observe the near-identical paths that did not break through, so luck stays visible and unscored.
Multiplying capacity documented later in the path. Measures what was present, not whether it was inherited, earned, self-built, external, or mixed.
Access or conditions documented near the beginning of the path. Zero means "no clear evidence in reviewed sources," not "advantage was absent."
Radjabov was born to Boris Sheynin, a Jewish petroleum engineer and strong chess player who attended the same chess school as Garry Kasparov, and Leyla Radjabova, an Azerbaijani English teacher. His father left his job to dedicate time to Radjabov's chess training. The family was middle-class but the father's career sacrifice for chess training represents significant family investment. The Baku chess tradition, shared with Kasparov, provided a deep chess culture.
Not documented.
Radjabov's father was a strong chess player who attended Kasparov's chess school and left his job to train Radjabov, representing exceptional family domain inheritance and dedicated mentorship (score 2 for both). The Baku chess school tradition was a frontier ecosystem (score 2). Starting at age three and winning European championships at 12 demonstrates prodigy-level talent (score 2). His father's full-time dedication to training shows exceptional concentration intensity (score 3). The Baku chess culture, producing both Kasparov and Radjabov, represents deep domain proximity (score 2).
advantage confidence: High · source count: 3 · audit: source_verified · status: subagent_researched_beta