Mikhail Chigorin
Mikhail Chigorin (
12 November 1850–
25 January 1908) was a leading
Russian
chess player and the first
grandmaster from Russia. He served as a major source of inspiration for the "
Soviet school of chess," which dominated the chess world in the latter part of the 20th century. He played two matches against
Wilhelm Steinitz for the
World Chess Championship; the first in
1889 he lost 10.5–6.5; the second in
1892 he lost 12.5–10.5. His overall record against Steinitz was respectable: +24-27=8.
He drew a match with
Siegbert Tarrasch in
Saint Petersburg in 1893 (+9-9=4). He had a narrow lifetime plus score of +14-13=8.
Chigorin started serious chess rather late in life, and his first international tournament was
Berlin 1881, where he was 3rd=.
He placed second, ahead of reigning world champion
Lasker and former world champion Steinitz, in the
Hastings 1895 chess tournament, in which all the greatest players of the time participated. The winner,
Harry Nelson Pillsbury, lost their individual game and had great respect for Chigorin's ability. Chigorin maintained a narrow lifetime plus score against him (+8-7=6).
He was 2nd= in
Budapest 1896, and beat
Rudolf Charousek +3-1 in the playoff. He was skilled at gambits, and won the Vienna King's Gambit Tournament in 1903. He also beat Lasker +2-1=3 in a sponsored
Rice Gambit tournament in
Brighton, where he took black in every game; neither player took the result as reflecting chess strength as opposed to the weakness of the gambit.
Chigorin has several
chess openings named after him, most notably the Chigorin Variation of the
Ruy Lopez (in
algebraic notation, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 O-O 9.h3 Na5). There is also the
Chigorin Defense to the
Queen's Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6).
Although Chigorin had a heavily negative record against Lasker (+1-8=4), he beat Lasker with the black pieces in their first game at
Hastings in
1895. It resulted in a classic two
knights v two
bishops ending, where Lasker's bishops were better but he underestimated Chigorin's strategy.[
1].
Chigorin had the measure of
Richard Teichmann (+8-3=1) but couldn't handle
David Janowski (+4-17=4).
A famous Chigorin's match played against
Wilhelm Steinitz in 1892 is used as the base for the plot of
The Squares of the City, a 1978 science-fiction novel by
John Brunner.
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Mikhail Chigorin download 171 of his games in pgn format.
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Chigorin's games at muljadi.org*
25 Critical Positions from His Games
