World Championship 1889: Steinitz – Chigorin
Three years after becoming the first World Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz crossed the Atlantic to defend his title in Havana against Mikhail Chigorin, the fiery leader of the Russian school. It was the second official World Championship match — a clash between Steinitz's new positional science and Chigorin's romantic love of the attack.
◈Science against romance
Having beaten Johannes Zukertort in 1886, Steinitz was still the game's great theoretician — the man teaching that chess was governed by principles of structure and accumulation rather than pure attacking flair. Chigorin was his temperamental opposite: a Russian romantic who trusted the initiative and the gambit above all, and who despised much of Steinitz's dogma.
The Havana Chess Club put up the purse — at $1,150 the smallest of any world-championship encounter — and the match ran under a first-to-10½ rule across a maximum of twenty games.
◈Steinitz holds the crown
The two traded blows in a hard, decisive fight with only a single draw in seventeen games. Steinitz's deeper understanding gradually told, and he reached the winning score at 10½–6½ to retain the title.
It would not be their last word: the two men met again in Havana in 1892 for one of the most dramatic finishes the championship has ever seen.
◈Cross Table
| Player | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steinitz | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ½ | 10½ |
| Chigorin | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ½ | 6½ |
1 win · ½ draw · 0 loss — click a game number to replay it.