Mikhail Chigorin

Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin was a Russian chess player, born in 1850 and dead in 1908. He played two World Championship matches against the first official champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, in 1889 and 1892, and lost both of them. He is remembered as the last great player of the Romantic style, a school of chess built on sacrifices and open attacks, and as a major source of inspiration for the Soviet school of chess, which went on to dominate the game through the middle and later twentieth century. Chigorin tied for first place at the New York tournament of 1889 and won the first three All-Russian tournaments between 1899 and 1903.