Andrew Paulson, an expatriate American serial entrepreneur who became a media mogul in Moscow and envisioned transforming world chess into a sports extravaganza, died on July 18 in London. He was 58.

The cause was complications of lung cancer, his husband, Loïc Landry Tchouante, said.

Besides his transformative but short-lived role as an international chess patron, Mr. Paulson’s career included stints as a fashion photographer in France and a magazine and website publisher in Russia.

Before he was 30, he was the model for the buffoonish protagonist in his friend David Hirson’s play “La Bête” (“The Beast”), a comedy, inspired by Molière, that opened on Broadway in 1991. (Reviewing a 2010 revival starring Mark Rylance, Ben Brantley of The New York Times described the character as “the unstoppable, primitive force of chaos.”)

Mr. Paulson seemed so much larger than life that whether his autobiography was the unvarnished truth almost seemed beyond the point.