Mikhail Chigorin
Encyclopedia
Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin also (Tchigorin; ) (12 November 1850 (31 October old style), Gatchina
– 25 January 1908, Lublin
) was a leading Russian chess
player. The last great player of the Romantic chess
style, he also served as a major source of inspiration for the "Soviet
school of chess
", which dominated the chess world in the middle and latter parts of the 20th century.
Once smitten with the game, he terminated his employment and started life as a chess professional. In 1876, he started a chess magazine, Chess Sheet, which he edited until 1881 (only 250 subscribers in all of Russia). He played a series of matches with established masters Emanuel Schiffers
(1878–1880) and Semyon Alapin
(1880) and notched up a large plus score against each. It was not long after that he was regarded as the best player in the city and possibly the whole of Russia.
His first international tournament was Berlin 1881, where he was equal third (+10-5=1) with Szymon Winawer
, behind Johannes Zukertort
and Joseph Henry Blackburne
. There were 17 master competitors in this event.
At the great London tournament of 1883
, he finished fourth (+16-10=0) behind Zukertort, Wilhelm Steinitz
and Blackburne. There were 14 competitors in this double round robin event. The tournament included practically all the best chessplayers in the world.
At the very strong tournament of New York 1889 he was equal first with Max Weiss
. Following this great success he challenged the world champion Steinitz for a match with the World Championship
at stake.
The match was played at Havana
in 1889, but he lost 10½–6½ (+6-10=1). A second match was played also at Havana in 1892, but he still lost 12½–10½ (+8-10=5). His overall record against Steinitz was very close (+24-27=8). He also played a much publicised 'telegraph match' against Steinitz in 1890, devised to settle a theoretical argument. Chigorin had the slight advantage of choosing the openings in advance from a list supplied by Steinitz and duly won both games.
Towards the end of the century, his standing at home and abroad continued to rise, and he joined the ranks of the world's top four or five players. His reputation as a match player too, continued to grow. He drew an 1893 match with Siegbert Tarrasch
in Saint Petersburg
(+9-9=4) and in his lifetime, maintained a narrow plus score against the German (+14-13=8), who was a fearsome player in his own right. He had a strong plus score against Richard Teichmann
(+8-3=1), but a poor record versus David Janowski (+4-17=4). Most of his losses to Janowski occurred late in Chigorin's life, when he was past his best.
In all likelihood, his best performance occurred at the Hastings 1895 chess tournament
, where he placed second, ahead of reigning world champion Emanuel Lasker
, Tarrasch and former world champion Steinitz. All of the greatest players of the time participated in the event and Chigorin's outstanding result included winning his individual encounter with tournament victor, Harry Nelson Pillsbury
. Pillsbury had great respect for Chigorin's ability and for good reason, as Chigorin had a marginal lifetime plus score against him (+8-7=6). Although Chigorin had a poor record against Lasker in serious play (+1-8=4), he was victorious with the black pieces in their first game of this 1895 tournament, in which he outplayed Lasker in a classic two knight
s versus two bishop
s ending.
In other major competitions, he was joint winner at Budapest
1896, and beat Rudolf Charousek (+3-1) in the playoff. At Cologne
in 1898, he was equal second with Charousek and Wilhelm Cohn
after Amos Burn
. His 7th place finish at London 1899 was disappointing in comparison, but this was another tournament notable for its impressive list of participants. At Monte Carlo
1901, he placed equal third after Janowski and Carl Schlecter.
A highly skilled exponent of gambit
lines, he won the King's Gambit
-themed Vienna
Tournament of 1903 and defeated Lasker (+2-1=3) in a sponsored Rice Gambit
tournament in Brighton
. The latter was however something of a hollow victory, as it was emerging that the Rice Gambit was unsound and so, playing the black side in each game gave him a distinct advantage. He was also perhaps the most skilled 19th century practitioner of the Evans Gambit, which featured in many of his great duels with Steinitz. At Łódź 1906, in a four-person event, he finished second to Akiba Rubinstein
.
Alongside these international events, he also entered and won the first three All-Russia Tournaments of 1899, 1900/01 and 1903. These prestigious successes further cemented his reputation as Russia's best player. Upon losing the fourth such event in 1906, he challenged the winner Gersz Salwe
to a match and came out the victor (+7=3-5).
. He also pioneered some variations of the Slav Defence. Although a large bearded man, Chigorin was also described as 'decidedly handsome'.
Frank Marshall once commented on the highly agitated state that would possess Chigorin when faced with difficult positions. Aside from the usual frantic foot-tapping and crossing of legs, he would occasionally become "a bundle of nerves", at which point his temperament could turn "quite fierce".
According to the Canadian International Master Lawrence Day
, Chigorin travelled with the young Fedor Bogatyrchuk
to Russian events in the 1905-1907 period, helping to train him. After moving to Canada following World War II, Bogatyrchuk then trained Day.
In 1907, Chigorin failed badly in a chess tournament. He was clearly not in good health and was diagnosed by doctors in Carlsbad
with an advanced and untreatable case of diabetes. This prompted a prediction that he had only months to live, whereupon he returned to his estranged wife and daughter in Lublin and died the following January. In 1909, a Chigorin Memorial
tournament was played in St. Petersburg, after that many more followed, from 1947 onwards mainly in Sochi
and from 1990 back in Saint Petersburg.
", later to become known as the Soviet School of Chess. Overshadowed to some extent in the 1920s by the exciting new theories of the hypermodern movement
, Chigorin's influence nevertheless demands a prominent and permanent place in the Soviet chess hegemony of the 20th century.
Chigorin has several chess opening
s or variations of openings named after him, the two most important being the Chigorin Variation of the Ruy Lopez
(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) and the Chigorin Defence to the Queen's Gambit
(1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6). Whilst the former has remained popular through the 1900s, the latter struggled to attract a great many devotees until relatively recently. Igor Miladinović
has used the Chigorin Defence with great regularity, but its current revival owes much to the efforts of Alexander Morozevich
, who has championed the opening both in play and in his book - The Chigorin Defence According To Morozevich (published 2007).
Another opening line invented by Chigorin is 1.e4 e6 2.Qe2 in the French Defence
. It is now generally regarded as a forerunner of King's Indian setups, but Chigorin also played it with other ideas (such as b2-b3) in mind.
, a 1965 science-fiction novel by John Brunner
.
Gatchina
Gatchina is a town and the administrative center of Gatchinsky District of Leningrad Oblast, Russia, located south of St. Petersburg by the road leading to Pskov...
– 25 January 1908, Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
) was a leading Russian chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
player. The last great player of the Romantic chess
Romantic chess
Romantic chess was the style of chess prevalent in the 19th century. It was characterized by brash sacrifices and open, tactical games. Winning was secondary to winning with style, so much, in fact, that it was considered unsportsmanly to decline a gambit...
style, he also served as a major source of inspiration for the "Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
school of chess
School of chess
A school of chess means a chess player or group of players that share common ideas about the strategy of the game. There have been several schools in the history of modern chess. Today there is less dependence on schools – players draw on many sources and play according to their personal...
", which dominated the chess world in the middle and latter parts of the 20th century.
Chess career
Chigorin was born near St. Petersburg and moved to the city some time later. His father worked in the Okhtensk gunpowder works. Chigorin's parents died young and Chigorin entered the Gatchinsk Orphans' Institute at the age of 10. He became serious about chess uncommonly late in life; his schoolteacher taught him the moves at the age of 16, but he did not take to the game until around 1874, having first finished his studies before commencing a career as a government officer.Once smitten with the game, he terminated his employment and started life as a chess professional. In 1876, he started a chess magazine, Chess Sheet, which he edited until 1881 (only 250 subscribers in all of Russia). He played a series of matches with established masters Emanuel Schiffers
Emanuel Schiffers
Emanuel Stepanovich Schiffers was a Russian chess player and chess writer. For many years he was the second leading Russian player after Mikhail Chigorin.Schiffers parents emigrated from Germany...
(1878–1880) and Semyon Alapin
Semyon Alapin
Semyon Zinovyevich Alapin was a Russian and Lithuanian chess master, openings analyst, and puzzle composer. He was a linguist, railway engineer and merchant .-Biography:...
(1880) and notched up a large plus score against each. It was not long after that he was regarded as the best player in the city and possibly the whole of Russia.
His first international tournament was Berlin 1881, where he was equal third (+10-5=1) with Szymon Winawer
Szymon Winawer
Szymon Abramowicz Winawer , born in Warsaw, Poland, was a leading chess player who won the German Chess Championship in 1883...
, behind Johannes Zukertort
Johannes Zukertort
Johannes Hermann Zukertort was a leading chess master of German-Polish-Jewish origin. He was one of the leading world players for most of the 1870s and 1880s, and lost to Wilhelm Steinitz in the World Chess Championship 1886, which is generally seen as the first World Chess Championship match, he...
and Joseph Henry Blackburne
Joseph Henry Blackburne
Joseph Henry Blackburne , nicknamed "The Black Death", dominated British chess during the latter part of the 19th century. He learned the game at the relatively late age of 18 but quickly became a strong player and went on to develop a professional chess career that spanned over 50 years...
. There were 17 master competitors in this event.
At the great London tournament of 1883
London 1883 chess tournament
The London 1883 chess tournament was a strong chess tournament among most of the leading players of the day. It was won convincingly by Johannes Zukertort ahead of Wilhelm Steinitz . Remarkably, Zukertort was already assured of victory with three rounds to go, having scored an astonishing 22/23...
, he finished fourth (+16-10=0) behind Zukertort, Wilhelm Steinitz
Wilhelm Steinitz
Wilhelm Steinitz was an Austrian and then American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. From the 1870s onwards, commentators have debated whether Steinitz was effectively the champion earlier...
and Blackburne. There were 14 competitors in this double round robin event. The tournament included practically all the best chessplayers in the world.
At the very strong tournament of New York 1889 he was equal first with Max Weiss
Max Weiss
Miksa Weisz was an Austrian chess player born in the Kingdom of Hungary.Weiss was born in Sereď. Moving to Vienna, he studied mathematics and physics at the university, and later taught those subjects....
. Following this great success he challenged the world champion Steinitz for a match with the World Championship
World Chess Championship
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest this title....
at stake.
The match was played at Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
in 1889, but he lost 10½–6½ (+6-10=1). A second match was played also at Havana in 1892, but he still lost 12½–10½ (+8-10=5). His overall record against Steinitz was very close (+24-27=8). He also played a much publicised 'telegraph match' against Steinitz in 1890, devised to settle a theoretical argument. Chigorin had the slight advantage of choosing the openings in advance from a list supplied by Steinitz and duly won both games.
Towards the end of the century, his standing at home and abroad continued to rise, and he joined the ranks of the world's top four or five players. His reputation as a match player too, continued to grow. He drew an 1893 match with Siegbert Tarrasch
Siegbert Tarrasch
Siegbert Tarrasch was one of the strongest chess players and most influential chess teachers of the late 19th century and early 20th century....
in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
(+9-9=4) and in his lifetime, maintained a narrow plus score against the German (+14-13=8), who was a fearsome player in his own right. He had a strong plus score against Richard Teichmann
Richard Teichmann
Richard Teichmann was a German chess master.He was known as "Richard the Fifth" because he often finished in fifth place in tournaments. But in Karlsbad 1911, he scored a convincing win, crushing Akiba Rubinstein and Carl Schlechter with the same line of the Ruy Lopez...
(+8-3=1), but a poor record versus David Janowski (+4-17=4). Most of his losses to Janowski occurred late in Chigorin's life, when he was past his best.
In all likelihood, his best performance occurred at the Hastings 1895 chess tournament
Hastings 1895 chess tournament
The Hastings 1895 chess tournament was a round-robin tournament of chess conducted in Hastings, England from August 5 to September 2, 1895.Hastings 1895 was arguably the strongest tournament in history at the time it occurred. All of the strongest players of the generation competed...
, where he placed second, ahead of reigning world champion Emanuel Lasker
Emanuel Lasker
Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years...
, Tarrasch and former world champion Steinitz. All of the greatest players of the time participated in the event and Chigorin's outstanding result included winning his individual encounter with tournament victor, Harry Nelson Pillsbury
Harry Nelson Pillsbury
Harry Nelson Pillsbury , was a leading chess player. At age 22, he won one of the strongest tournaments of the time , but his illness and early death prevented him from challenging for the World Chess Championship.- Early life :Pillsbury was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, moved to New York City...
. Pillsbury had great respect for Chigorin's ability and for good reason, as Chigorin had a marginal lifetime plus score against him (+8-7=6). Although Chigorin had a poor record against Lasker in serious play (+1-8=4), he was victorious with the black pieces in their first game of this 1895 tournament, in which he outplayed Lasker in a classic two knight
Knight (chess)
The knight is a piece in the game of chess, representing a knight . It is normally represented by a horse's head and neck. Each player starts with two knights, which begin on the row closest to the player, one square from the corner...
s versus two bishop
Bishop (chess)
A bishop is a piece in the board game of chess. Each player begins the game with two bishops. One starts between the king's knight and the king, the other between the queen's knight and the queen...
s ending.
In other major competitions, he was joint winner at Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
1896, and beat Rudolf Charousek (+3-1) in the playoff. At Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
in 1898, he was equal second with Charousek and Wilhelm Cohn
Wilhelm Cohn
Wilhelm Cohn was a German chess master.He participated in some strong tournaments. In 1897, he tied for 13-14th in Berlin . In 1898, he tied for 2nd-4th in Cologne . In 1899, he tied for 10-11th in London...
after Amos Burn
Amos Burn
Amos Burn was an English chess player, one of the world's leading players at the end of the 19th century, and a chess writer....
. His 7th place finish at London 1899 was disappointing in comparison, but this was another tournament notable for its impressive list of participants. At Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco....
1901, he placed equal third after Janowski and Carl Schlecter.
A highly skilled exponent of gambit
Gambit
A gambit is a chess opening in which a player, most often White, sacrifices material, usually a pawn, with the hope of achieving a resulting advantageous position. Some well-known examples are the King's Gambit , Queen's Gambit , and Evans Gambit...
lines, he won the King's Gambit
King's Gambit
The King's Gambit is a chess opening that begins with the moves:White offers a pawn to divert the Black e-pawn so as to build a strong centre with d2–d4...
-themed Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
Tournament of 1903 and defeated Lasker (+2-1=3) in a sponsored Rice Gambit
Rice Gambit
The Rice Gambit is a chess opening that arises from the King's Gambit Accepted. An offshoot of the Kieseritzky Gambit, it is characterized by the moves 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5 4. h4 g4 5. Ne5 Nf6 6. Bc4 d5 7. exd5 Bd6 8. O-O...
tournament in Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
. The latter was however something of a hollow victory, as it was emerging that the Rice Gambit was unsound and so, playing the black side in each game gave him a distinct advantage. He was also perhaps the most skilled 19th century practitioner of the Evans Gambit, which featured in many of his great duels with Steinitz. At Łódź 1906, in a four-person event, he finished second to Akiba Rubinstein
Akiba Rubinstein
Akiba Kiwelowicz Rubinstein was a famous Polish chess Grandmaster at the beginning of the 20th century. He was scheduled to play a match with Emanuel Lasker for the world championship in 1914, but it was cancelled because of the outbreak of World War I...
.
Alongside these international events, he also entered and won the first three All-Russia Tournaments of 1899, 1900/01 and 1903. These prestigious successes further cemented his reputation as Russia's best player. Upon losing the fourth such event in 1906, he challenged the winner Gersz Salwe
Gersz Salwe
Gersz Salwe was a Polish chess player.-Biography:Salwe was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw ....
to a match and came out the victor (+7=3-5).
Style and demeanour
His playing style featured a well honed tactical ability and an imaginative approach to the opening. He rejected many of the inflexible doctrines put forward by Tarrasch and Steinitz, but accepted Steinitz' teachings about the soundness of the defensive centre. Indeed, he went on to add to the development of the concept through the work he carried out with closed variations of the Ruy LopezRuy Lopez
The Ruy Lopez, also called the Spanish Opening or Spanish Game, is a chess opening characterised by the moves:-History:The opening is named after the 16th century Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura, who made a systematic study of this and other openings in the 150-page book on chess Libro del...
. He also pioneered some variations of the Slav Defence. Although a large bearded man, Chigorin was also described as 'decidedly handsome'.
Frank Marshall once commented on the highly agitated state that would possess Chigorin when faced with difficult positions. Aside from the usual frantic foot-tapping and crossing of legs, he would occasionally become "a bundle of nerves", at which point his temperament could turn "quite fierce".
Later life
As an ambassador for Russian chess, Chigorin was a shining example; he gave many lectures, wrote magazine articles and chess columns and subsidised or otherwise supported a number of periodicals to keep them afloat despite low readership levels. He also founded a chess club in Saint Petersburg and tried for many years to establish a chess association, an attempt that finally succeeded just a few years after his death.According to the Canadian International Master Lawrence Day
Lawrence Day
Lawrence Day is a Canadian chess International Master, author, and journalist. He has represented Canada at 13 Chess Olympiads.- Early life :...
, Chigorin travelled with the young Fedor Bogatyrchuk
Fedor Bogatyrchuk
Fedir Parfenovych Bohatyrchuk was a Ukrainian-Canadian International Master of chess, and an...
to Russian events in the 1905-1907 period, helping to train him. After moving to Canada following World War II, Bogatyrchuk then trained Day.
In 1907, Chigorin failed badly in a chess tournament. He was clearly not in good health and was diagnosed by doctors in Carlsbad
Karlovy Vary
Karlovy Vary is a spa city situated in western Bohemia, Czech Republic, on the confluence of the rivers Ohře and Teplá, approximately west of Prague . It is named after King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who founded the city in 1370...
with an advanced and untreatable case of diabetes. This prompted a prediction that he had only months to live, whereupon he returned to his estranged wife and daughter in Lublin and died the following January. In 1909, a Chigorin Memorial
Chigorin Memorial
The Chigorin Memorial is a chess tournament played in honour of the chess legend Mikhail Chigorin , founder of the Soviet School. The first and most important edition was the one played in 1909 in St. Petersburg. Later on, the tournament was mainly played in the Black Sea resort Sochi. From 1993...
tournament was played in St. Petersburg, after that many more followed, from 1947 onwards mainly in Sochi
Sochi
Sochi is a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, situated just north of Russia's border with the de facto independent republic of Abkhazia, on the Black Sea coast. Greater Sochi sprawls for along the shores of the Black Sea near the Caucasus Mountains...
and from 1990 back in Saint Petersburg.
Legacy
Through his original talent, lively games and prolific teachings, many Russians regard Mikhail Chigorin as the founder of their "School of chessSchool of chess
A school of chess means a chess player or group of players that share common ideas about the strategy of the game. There have been several schools in the history of modern chess. Today there is less dependence on schools – players draw on many sources and play according to their personal...
", later to become known as the Soviet School of Chess. Overshadowed to some extent in the 1920s by the exciting new theories of the hypermodern movement
Hypermodernism (chess)
Hypermodernism is a school of chess that emerged after World War I. It featured challenges on the chess ideologies presented by central European masters, such as on Wilhelm Steinitz’ approach to the centre. It also challenged in particular the dogmatic rules set down by Siegbert Tarrasch...
, Chigorin's influence nevertheless demands a prominent and permanent place in the Soviet chess hegemony of the 20th century.
Chigorin has several chess opening
Chess opening
A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...
s or variations of openings named after him, the two most important being the Chigorin Variation of the Ruy Lopez
Ruy Lopez
The Ruy Lopez, also called the Spanish Opening or Spanish Game, is a chess opening characterised by the moves:-History:The opening is named after the 16th century Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura, who made a systematic study of this and other openings in the 150-page book on chess Libro del...
(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) and the Chigorin Defence to the Queen's Gambit
Queen's Gambit
The Queen's Gambit is a chess opening that starts with the moves:The Queen's Gambit is one of the oldest known chess openings. It was mentioned in the Göttingen manuscript of 1490 and was later analysed by masters such as Gioachino Greco in the seventeenth century...
(1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6). Whilst the former has remained popular through the 1900s, the latter struggled to attract a great many devotees until relatively recently. Igor Miladinović
Igor Miladinovic
Igor Miladinović is a Serbian chess grandmaster. On the November 2009 FIDE list his Elo rating was 2553.Miladinović won the 1993 World Junior Chess Championship and at the end of the year was declared for the athlete of the Year in Yugoslavia. In 1994 he played for Yugoslavia in the Moscow...
has used the Chigorin Defence with great regularity, but its current revival owes much to the efforts of Alexander Morozevich
Alexander Morozevich
Alexander Morozevich is a Russian chess Grandmaster. In the November 2011 FIDE list, he had an Elo rating of 2762, making him the 9th-highest rated player in the world, although he has previously ranked as high as second, in the July 2008 list....
, who has championed the opening both in play and in his book - The Chigorin Defence According To Morozevich (published 2007).
Another opening line invented by Chigorin is 1.e4 e6 2.Qe2 in the French Defence
French Defence
The French Defence is a chess opening. It is characterised by the moves:The French has a reputation for solidity and resilience, though it can result in a somewhat cramped game for Black in the early stages...
. It is now generally regarded as a forerunner of King's Indian setups, but Chigorin also played it with other ideas (such as b2-b3) in mind.
In popular culture
A famous Chigorin game played against Steinitz in 1892 is used as the base for the plot of The Squares of the CityThe Squares of the City
The Squares of the City is a science fiction novel written by John Brunner and first published in 1965 . It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1966....
, a 1965 science-fiction novel by John Brunner
John Brunner (novelist)
John Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...
.
External links
- Mikhail Chigorin download 171 of his games in pgn format.
- Statistics at ChessWorld.net