Tragic ends of some chess giants

Vera Menchik, the first world women champion died in London ( June 1944) due to a Nazi V1-rocket attack, along with her mother and two sisters.

Alexi Troitzky and  Leonid Kubbel , considered to be foremost composers of endgame studies and problems , died in 1942 from starvation caused by the bitter siege of Leningrad that lasted 900 days .

Korchnoi survived the siege while Spassky were among the timely evacuees , counting himself lucky that the train  that carried him wasn't  bombed.

Wilhelm Steinitz collapsed and went insane after his decisive loss in his rematch vs Lasker. He spent his last days in nursing home.

Mikhail Chigorin suffered with diabetes - untreatable at that time.

Carl Schlechter died of pneumonia aggravated by starvation caused by war and subsequent collapse of Austria-Hungary.

Richard Reti died in 1929 of scarlet fever complications.

(In)famous chess organiser Nikolai Krylenko was executed in stalinist era as part of "regular cadre rotations".

Polish master Przepiorka was executed in Nazi death camp.

Latvian master Vladimir Petrov disappeared in soviet Gulag and never returned.

Karel Treybal was executed by Nazis for "illegal" gun possession. (He wasn't Jewish btw.)

Klaus Junge was shot dead when he refused to surrender to British soldiers shouting "Heil Hitler!", just two weeks before the end of WWII.

Alexander Alekhine died under weird circumstances. He might have been murdered by soviet agents or jewish nazi-hunters. He was suspected of active involvement in Nazi antisemitic propaganda.

Leonid Stein died of heart attack aged 38.

Mikhail Tal suffered with kidney disease for 30 years and finally succumbed to it.

Karen Grigorian jumped down from the bridge in Yerevan in 1989.

British correspondence GM Simon Webb was stabbed to death by his own son.

Robert Fischer refused medical treatment of urinary tract blockage and died of subsequent kidney failure and uremia.

Ilyin-Genevsky was wounded so badly during WW1 that he forgot how to play chess. After the war he relearnt the moves, and attained master level for the second time.

During WW2, he was on a barge fleeing Leningrad. The barge was bombed by the Nazis. There was one casualty, Ilyin-Genevsky.

Fischer was turned into a fugitive by his home country for having too big a mouth, something his fellow countrymen are supposed to have anyway! apart from busting a boycott.

Akiba Rubenstein gradually lost his sanity and ended up living "in reduced circumstances".

Tony Miles, Britain's first grandmaster, suffered a breakdown in 1987, and died at the age of 47 in 2001. 

Around the time Nigel Short slept with his girlfriend.

Harry Nelson Pillsbury died of syphilis.

Hungarian masters Rudolf Charousek and Gyula Breyer both died of tuberculosis.

Georgy Agzamov died aged 31 in 1986

as the result of an accident at Sevastopol. He took a short cut to go swimming and fell down between two rocks and became trapped. Passers by heard his cries for help but he was too deep down and by the time firemen got to him it was too late

http://www.chessgames.com/player/georgy_tadzhikanovich_agzamov.html

Grandmaster Hein Donner (Netherlands) suffered brain stroke leaving him half-paralyzed. He died of stomach ulcer bleeding in nursing home.

Many to choose from on this list:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessuser?uname=ziggurat

Hungarian GM Janos Flesch died in car accident with his wife in England 1983 during Kasparov vs Korchnoi candidate match he visited as chess journalist. He keeps unsurpassed record in blindfold simul against 52 opponents at once from 1960 (there is some controversy about validity of this record since he was allowed to consult sheets and some games were short draws).