brankat: A 158 years since M.Chigorin's birth!
And yet, so many of his games, and ideas, feel as fresh and new, as if they were played only recently.
Two greatest players of the period, Chigorin and Steinitz were contemporaries, although the latter was 14 years older. They played 2 matches for the Champion's title, in 1889 and 1892. Steinitz prevailed both times.
They were very much different in how they saw the game, in approach, and style. Here is Fred Reinfeld's comment:
"These two geniuses had an unrivaled insight into the nature of chess. Whereas the popularizers think of chess as being amenable to order, logic, exactitude, calculation, foresight and other comparable qualities, Steinitz and Tchigorin agreed on one thing: that chess can be, and often is, as irrational as life itself.
It is full of disorder, imperfection, blunders, inexactitudes, fortuitous happenings, and unforeseen consequences.
But whereas Steinitz strove with all his might to impose order on the irrational, Tchigorin went to the other extreme. Let us surrender to the irrational, he said in effect.
Steinitz tried to banish the unforeseen. Tchigorin took delight in it.
Steinitz sought order, system, logic, balance, broad basic postulates; Tchigorin wanted surprise, change, novelty, glitter, the lightning stroke from a clear sky."
It may be of interest to some to note that Bobby Fischer held Chigorin in very high regard, and during the preparations for his match with Spassky in 1972, he spent just as much time studying the games of M.Chigorin as he did the work of Spassky.
Fischer considered himself a disciple of W.Steinitz, and Spassky a disciple of M.Chigorin.
R.I.P. Master Mikhail!
