As to efforts to popularize chess, Mr. Ilyumzhinov said Mr. Paulson has “done a good job” but that his efforts are a part of FIDE’s larger plans to expand the sport.

Mr. Paulson can claim distance from the governing body and chess itself. He plays chess, but not seriously. He used this seeming liability as a selling point when he recently ran for the presidency of the English Chess Federation. Before the vote, he told people: “I represent the largest constituency in chess. I enjoy chess, I play chess, I love chess, but I’m not a professional.” He won. Now he’s thinking about using his outsider status to run for the presidency of FIDE, creating a challenge for the prevailing chess powers.

Being an outsider is not a problem for Mr. Paulson. He didn’t know Russian when he went to Moscow in 1993, after spending some years as a fashion photographer in France. He grew up around academics; his father is Ronald Paulson, a prolific author and an English professor retired from Johns Hopkins University. His own instincts are entrepreneurial. In Russia, he enmeshed himself in the media scene, and founded a company that started Afisha, a cultural magazine, among other publications. Later, he started SUP, a blogging platform that was one of the most visited sites in Russia and remains a major cultural influence. He declines to say how much wealth he amassed from these ventures, but says it is modest when compared with that of American media entrepreneurs.

What he is rich in is stories. Like the one about the executive who gave Mr. Paulson the keys to a BMW 7 Series vehicle for six months. Or the story about two KGB colonels he worked with in Russia who he said were kidnapped, castrated, taken into the forest, stripped, burned and shot. When asked later for specifics, he pointed to online articles about the brutal killings, but added that his own version “may in some way be both subjective and the product of the narrative rounding.”

Are his stories the unvarnished truth? Maybe. Maybe not, but it doesn’t really matter, said Julia Idlis, a Russian writer who chose Mr. Paulson as her subject when asked by a Moscow theater to write a play about someone who made a mark on the tech sector.

“He is emblematic of the American character,” she said. “For us, Americans are people who think they can do anything, which is both very aggravating and very inspiring.” She describes Mr. Paulson as a master seducer. “He manages to include everyone he talks to into his universe and in his projects and, even if when you get there you realize that reality is not like what he describes, you are already inspired and already there so it’s too late — and you’ve started working.”

After leaving Russia in 2009, Mr. Paulson kicked around Britain, exploring various entrepreneurial pursuits. In 2011, a friend connected him with FIDE, which wanted to breathe life into chess. After he agreed to pay a $500,000 deposit for the marketing rights for 11 years — he says no money has yet changed hands — one of his first steps was to try to create a brand and organization that stand apart from the governing body. His brand is called “World Chess,” with its tagline: “The best mind wins.”