The Chigorin Memorial is a

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

tournament played in honour of

Mikhail Chigorin Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin (also ''Tchigorin''; russian: Михаи́л Ива́нович Чиго́рин; – ) was a Russian chess player. He played two World Championship matches against Wilhelm Steinitz, losing both times. The last great ...

(1850–1908), founder of the Soviet Chess School and one of the leading players of his day. The first and most important edition was the one played in 1909 in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

. Later on, an international invitation Memorial tournament series was established, and mainly played in the Black Sea resort Sochi (from 1963 to 1990). Further irregular tournaments had been held in 1947, 1951, 1961, and 1972, played in diverse venues. From 1993 the venue returned to his hometown. The Memorial is now played as an Open event.

St. Petersburg 1909

President of the organising committee was

Peter Petrovich Saburov Peter Petrovich Saburov (Sabouroff) (, Saint Petersburg, Russia – 26 March 1932, Geneva, Switzerland) was a Russian diplomat, chess master and organizer, and musical composer. He was a son of Peter Alexandrovich Saburov, a diplomat and chess or ...

, President of the St. Petersburg Chess Club. Members of the committee were

Boris Maliutin Boris Evgenievich Maliutin (Maljutin, Malyutin, Malutin) (1883–1920) was a chess master. Chess career He played many tournaments in Saint Petersburg. He took 4th in 1902, 8th in 1903, 13th, 5th, 2nd and 3rd in 1904, tied for 3-4th, tied for 4- ...

, O. Sossnitzky, V. Tschudowski, Sergius A. Znosko-Borovsky and Eugene A. Znosko-Borovsky. The main event lasted from 14 February to 12 March 1909. : Rubinstein and Lasker won 875 rubles (each), Spielmann and Duras 475 rubles (each), Bernstein 190 rubles, Teichmann 120 rubles, Perlis 80 rubles, Cohn, Schlechter, and Salwe 40 rubles (each).St. Petersburg 1909 and 1914

1947-1972

From 1947, there were several Chigorin memorial tournaments, but it was not until 1963 that it was established as an annual event in Sochi. These tournaments were all played on the

round robin Round-robin may refer to: Computing * Round-robin DNS, a technique for dealing with redundant Internet Protocol service hosts * Round-robin networks, communications networks made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology * Round-robin schedu ...

format. :

Sochi period (1963-1990)

Back to St. Petersburg (1993-present)

Since 1993, the Chigorin Memorial has been played as an open

Swiss system tournament A Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format that features a fixed number of rounds of competition, but considerably fewer than for a round-robin tournament; thus each competitor (team or individual) does not play all the other ...

. The 13th edition was not played for superstitious reasons. The winners are listed below. :

References

* The International Chess Congress: St. Petersburg 1909, New York, edition Lasker Press, 1910 (reprinted by Dover books 1971)

External links

St. Petersburg 1909 and 1914
*The Independent, 1999,

Jon Speelman Jonathan Simon Speelman (born 2 October 1956) is an English Grandmaster (chess), Grandmaster chess player, mathematician and chess writer. Early life and education He was educated at Worcester College, Oxford, where he read Mathematics. Caree ...

Results 1993-1999
*Results from

The Week in Chess ''The Week in Chess'' (TWIC) is a chess news web site. It was founded in 1994 and is based in the United Kingdom. ''TWIC'' has been edited by Mark Crowther since its inception in 1994. It began as a weekly Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide d ...

: TWIC 157 (1997)
TWIC 212 (1998)20092011
*Results from ChessBase
2006 edition2010 edition
*Results from Ruschess
2004 edition
*Results from Rusbase

*Results from Chess-Results
2012201320142015
{{Chess tournaments Chess competitions Chess in Russia 1909 in chess Chess memorial tournaments 1909 in the Russian Empire