Loser's POV: Mikhail Chigorin (1880-1889)

Please welcome back @JediGoat whose exile has ended after he correctly chose this match's victor (see here).

If this were a more serious tournament, I actually might feel a little bad for Chigorin, as his path through this bracket was stacked. Both Winawer and Tarrasch were very powerful foes, and if either had been more active in the 1880s, I could see either one toppling the Russian superstar. Unfortunately for him, his inactivity combined with Blackburne's consistency and success was just too much to overcome. The Black Death will be the one contesting the final match of the series, while his fallen antagonist gets our attention today.

Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin was born on 12 November 1850 in St. Petersburg. He lost both of his parents before he was even nine years old, and spent the remainder of his childhood in the Gatchina Orphans Institute. This was a stereotypically evil place for children: greedy staff pocketing whatever money they could find, spoiled food resulting from the lack of funds, and cruel taskmasters who were perpetually drunk on power. The one redeeming factor of the Institute is that it was where Chigorin was introduced to chess, by one Augustus Schuman, a German language teacher. 

In 1868, during a particularly heated argument with the Director of the Institute, Chigorin and eight of his companions allegedly beat him unconscious, resulting in the lot of them being expelled. With such an unfortunate early life, it hopefully makes sense that we're going to jump ahead pretty far, as Chigorin was very secretive about his early years. 

In the 70s, Chigorin was living with his aunt in St. Petersburg. He got his proper start in chess at the same place as everyone else: Café Dominique.

Dominique was the main body for day-to-day chess play, but it was hardly a sporting place; its population played exclusively for money, never recorded their games, and were wholly antagonistic toward any sort of organization. Chigorin's first attempt to counter this was in his first magazine, Chess Sheet, published in September 1876. Here he displayed an above-average quality of writing, with which he continuously tried to rouse support for more organized chess play. Also valuable was his "Course on the Openings," which was studied thoroughly by the young Mikhail Botvinnik. However, insufficient subscriptions forced publication to stop after only five years.

Thankfully for Chigorin, over this same period, he had advanced his standing in the field of battle with match victories against Emmanuel Schiffers and Semion Alapin. His victory at the All-Russian tournament of 1879 (see here) further cemented his place at the very top of his country, and contributed to him finally getting to compete abroad. He acquitted himself well, scoring =3rd at Berlin 1881 and 4th at London 1883—he could have finished 3rd, but a blunder in the last round against tail-ender James Mortimer cost him that honour.

After this, Chigorin didn't play another tournament for over five years. What happened in between?

First, Chigorin quit his day job in early 1883 and devoted himself fully to chess, starting with his chess column in the Universal Illustrated magazine. In 1884, he founded the "St. Petersburg Society for Chess Amateurs," which marked his first step toward the proper organization of a governing body in Russia. 1885 saw the first publication of Chess Herald, Chigorin's second chess magazine and the organ of the Society. Efforts were made to organize some sort of Russian chess union, but they were frustrated all around by unwavering opposition from Konstantin Pobedonostsev, who was, in a word, anti-freedom. His disdain for the free press and close connections with the Czar made promotion of any kind a nightmare, and such a Union was not formed in his lifetime.

Where Chigorin was more successful was in his organization of, and playing in, correspondence tournaments. Due to the size of the country, any kind of physical organization would have logistical obstacles to overcome (even before the governmental oppression kicked in), but correspondence play was much easier. In 1884, he organized such a tournament within the Universal Illustrated, which ran from 1884 until 1886. Perhaps his most notable correspondence event from this time was a two game match between the St. Petersburg Society and the British Chess Club from 1886-1887. The match ended somewhat unceremoniously, with the BCC refusing to continue after 40 moves in each game. One was clearly winning for St. Petersburg, and while the other was adjudged a draw by the arbiter, Kolisch, Chigorin's subsequent analysis lead him to believe it was also winning for him. The games:

Perhaps, if we ask really nicely, my friend @simaginfan will provide us with another example or two—correspondence chess was always more up his alley.

The decade ended with two very important events: the World Championship match with Steinitz (which I discussed briefly in the previous chapter), and the New York 1889 tournament. This latter event showcased Chigorin at his peak, where his combinatorial brilliancy was fully on display, but some of his more eccentric patterns were replaced by calmer, "modern" tendencies. He was a competitive beast, finishing the mammoth tournament =1st with Max Weiss (see here). He went into the 1890s more internationally revered than ever, and his work to uplift the chess life in Russia was far from over.

All that will be saved for another day. For now, it's time for a deeper dive into the actual chess of this most illustrious figure.

Opening

While Chigorin's deep exploration into the openings started back in the 70s, none of the opening variations bearing his name were really tested at this point. I'll have more to say if (hopefully when) we return for his 90s bio.

As far as this decade is concerned, there isn't as much to talk about. His Black openings were fairly unconvincing, primarily featuring sufficiently combative Open games with a handful of unsuccessful French and Sicilian attempts in between. With White, the most interesting thing to discuss in this section is how often he played the Exchange French; it's definitely not the opening I'd most associate with him, but he somehow managed to make even these symmetrical snooze-fests lively and fun.

The bulk of his analytical work was done in his favourite gambits, of the King's and Evans varieties specifically. While it's perhaps a simplification to classify Chigorin as a Romantic, the bulk of his opening analyses (like in the aforementioned "Course on the Openings") were about Open games. He also, y'know, played the Evans gambit no fewer than eight times in his match with Steinitz—the previous World Championship match saw only one, with Steinitz playing his namesake gambit in the 20th and final game, so it's not like pawns were being sacrificed willy-nilly at this level. But Chigorin was doubtlessly the most consistent gambiteer of this era, with nobody really coming close until Rudolf Charousek later in the 90s.

Middlegame

Chigorin was widely considered the torch bearer for the "old"—or Romantic—school, though I've actually had a little bit of trouble understanding what that means. Another contemporary word thrown around a lot is "combination" play; multi-move sequences, pretty much always involving at least one sacrifice, that culminate in some decisive blow. In his own blog on Chigorin, kahns used a similar definition of combination (see here), so as far as one-word summaries are concerned, this is as good a descriptor as any.

As usual, Chigorin's positional play is widely understated by both his peers and armchair historians, which really does put him in the same league as the Romantics before him. When you really dig into things, the greatest of the Romantics were very strong positional players; Paul Morphy's famous Opera Game was only so smooth because his opponents' development was abysmally uncoordinated, while Adolf Anderssen was no slouch either, at least in his more serious games—simaginfan has written quite passionately about this topic here.

Whenever Chigorin happened to pull off a purely positional win, commentators would talk about his utilization of the "Modern" school, which feels really unfair. It's second nature today to realize that a strong attack flows from a strong position (barring swindles and whatnot), and even at the time, the talking heads should have known something similar—Louis Paulsen built his career on refuting unsound attacks for the past two decades, and yet he still frequently succumbed to successful sieges from Anderssen et al. Chigorin doubtlessly mastered knowing when, where, and how to attack, but the moves in between consisted of fundamentally sound positional play (which if you had to compare with another player, would be more like Tarrasch than Steinitz).

Endgame

As has been said before, Chigorin was a leagues better endgame player than what you'd expect from a "Romantic." His obsession with chess and deep calculation skills made him an endgame beast, since he never lost patience and often managed to work through the most complicated endings. Unfortunately, I'm writing this portion in between very aggressive school deadlines, so I don't have the time to really make a theme for this part. Hopefully you'll make do with some assorted, fun endgames that don't really have any cohesion aside from Chigorin winning. 

Conclusion

Chigorin is honestly one of the main reasons why I want to redo this whole thing when we finish exploring the 1890s, since I think that seeing him play consistently will be quite a treat. That'll be something to look forward to when I get there in, like, five years. My writing will remain slow, sorry in advance.

We're down to one more match! This series is almost over, so I hope you've all enjoyed this process. As a disclaimer, the finals between Blackburne and Zukertort will be long; they played so much chess against each other (two matches and six tournaments) so it'll be a long post. Couple that with how little time I have these days, and it'll be a bit of a wait. I'll do my best to make it worth waiting for.

Cheers