Two Chigorin Games And A bit Of Fun Stuff

Afternoon Everyone.

Quick gap between the cricket ( congratulations to young Rehan btw on breaking the legendary Brian Close's record. Remember the name - he is a real talent!) and the football to quickly throw some chess together.

Recently conversations turned to Mikhail Chigorin ( I prefer the older spelling, but have learned not to confuse matters!) I know my friend @kamalakanta is working on a post about him, so won't offer comment on his chess here.

That inspired me to treat myself to an early Christmas present - this book -

The series are wonderful browsing books - a diagram every 5 moves so you can easily follow the games.

So far I am up to the monstrous tournament that was New York 1889. It lasted two months, with 20 players meeting each other twice. As if that wasn't enough, in the second half drawn games had to be replayed!!( one game here exists because of that rule)

I particularly recalled two beautiful wins against William Pollock, so will post them here for you to enjoy, plus a couple of little bonus 'fun stuff' Christmas presents.

I am lucky enough to have a copy of the Tournament book. One of the great works of chess literature, 490 pages!. Steinitz annotated every game!! An extraordinary effort.

Of course, with so many games he had to limit the amount of concrete analysis, but he was a truly great annotator and chess thinker, so his more general comments are fascinating. I will include his notes to the two main games here to give you a taste of his work.

Although he was known to get into a heated debate or two ( major understatement!!) in his writings and game notes he was always objective, fair and generous. At the same time he had his own ideas - often expressed in a very matter-of-fact way. I really like his notes to the games of others, and hope you enjoy them.

I only know of one image from the event - but the source - Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper - may have more. Time is lacking to search through every issue of the year.

It has Chigorin in play against the other co-winner, Max/Mishka Weiss.

So to the games. Enjoy the chess!!

For those of you who don't know of him, William Henry Krause Pollock was both a fascinating chess figure, and a really dangerous player. In this tournament he won the brilliancy prize for his win against the tournament co-winner.

A nice picture of him - few exist. I have photographed it - hence the poor quality, but I didn't want to risk damaging a unique book by trying to scan it - from my copy of the tournament book ( as with the Chigorin one to follow)

The next game was a replay game from the second half of the tournament. The late Bob Wade gave it as an illustration of Chigorin's play in his lovely book 'Soviet Chess'

Some fun stuff.

The day after winning that beautiful game, Chigorin had rather a bad day at the office.

As Fischer said - that's chess. One day you give a lesson - next day you get a lesson.

The King on f7 is a bit of a theme here, and it appears in this next one as well.

George Dingley Hatfeild Gossip

didn't have a great tournament ( he really didn't have ANY great tournaments!!)

He was down 2 from bottom of the table, protested bitterly at not receiving the special prize for the best game of the second round ( he had a point!) and there is also a little story. Apparently he didn't realise that the alcoholic refreshments available to the players during the games ( there is a cartoon to be found of Blackburne asking the waiter for a whiskey and peppermint)  were not free gratis, and rather indulged himself. At the end of the tournament he was confronted with his rather large bar bill!

That's all you get today guys!

May I wish my friends here, and chess players everywhere, a very happy Christmas. May we all be here to celebrate it together same time next year. We are all one family, and Christmas is a time for families to put their differences aside and take pleasure in each others company.

See you all soon. Simaginfan.