High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin also (Tchigorin; Russian: Михаил Чигорин) (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.