Tuesday, April 30, 2019

The Attacking Genius Of Mikhail Chigorin

     Chess in Translation has an old article in 2010 titled The Forgotten Recollections of Chigorin’s Daughter that is fascinating reading. 
     Chessmetrics puts Chigorin's rating at a hefty 2797 in 1895 which places him right behind Lasker and Tarrasch. In 1889 and 1897 he is ranked number two behind Steinitz and Lasker respectively. In 1893 he tied Tarrasch 11-11 in a match in St. Petersburg. Both players score +9 -9 =4. The first player to win ten games would win the match, but if each player won nine games, the match would end without a winner. In Three Hundred Games, Tarrasch wrote that he received an invitation "couched in the most flattering terms" from St. Petersburg. However, Garry Kasparov stated in his On My Great Predecessors, Part I that Tarrasch challenged Chigorin. 
     In any case, Kasparov praised this match between the two who were among the best players in the world at the end of the Steinitz era for the richness of its content and noted that the contestants "fought literally to the to the last pawn: in the first nine games and the six final ones there was not a single draw!" The match was a battle between two different style: Tarrasch's classical style and Chigorin's creative style in which he frequently looked not for the rules but the exceptions. 
     The only book contining a collection of his games that I know of is Mikhail Chigorin: The Creative Genius by Jimmy Adams, but it has the rather hefty price tag of $34.00. I have never seen the book, but am familar with Adams writing which is superb. 


     Chigorin greatly influenced the development of chess in Russia because of his striking originality. He rebelled against the dogmatic principles of Steinitz and Tarrasch which he believed placed restrictions on creative thinking. Chigorin's claim was that it was necessary to take into account all the "concrete" features of the position and make a dynamic appraisal of each position, especially its tactical possibilities.  It was this thinking that lead him to infuse new life into many openings of the day and inspire those who came after him to delve more deeply into opening theory. 
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     Chigorin challenged Steinitz for the world championship twice, losing 10-6 and 10-8. In those matches Adams states "In the match came to light the weak side of Chigorin - the sportsman. He ought to have set himself the task, long before, of finding a correct system of play as Black against 1. d4. In 1889, as indeed also later, he placed too many hopes on improvisation at the board."
     While playing over the games from the book The Games of the St. Petersburg Tournament 1895-1896 by James Mason and WHK Pollock, the games of Chigorin were a source of fascination. 
     At the closing banquet of the Hastings 1895, Chigorin announced that the top prizewinners had been invited to St. Petersburg for a match-tournament to begin in December that year. The top finishers Pillsbury, Chigorin and Lasker, plus fifth-place finisher Steinitz agreed to play; fourth-place finisher Siegbert Tarrasch declined. They played six games against each other. The tournament was a disappointment for Pillsbury and Chigorin. 
     Pillsbury was in bad form in the second half and Chigorin in the first or the results might have been completely different. 


     In the following game Chigorin had lost the opening battle and was facing a sure defeat when at move 17 he decided on a R sacrifice that while not sound turned out to be more than Pillsbury could handle. He ended up in time pressure and wasn't able to find the correct defense. 

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