Morphy vs Modern, a Fair a Comparison?

In a recent blog on "Ratings Inflation", the matter of using "chess engines" to "rate" and thus compare 1900 century players, like Paul Morphy, came up. His "play" was likened to that of a current, 2014 Player of equivalent strength of 2300! These were my thoughts on the matter.

I get that, in such "debates", it is human to attribute "reality", hard & concrete legitimacy to "notional concepts", surely involving heavily invested emotional leanings, ...a sort of reification. We are human. And we are chess players, postulating outcomes of pitting our favorite historical players against today's best, by inference of rating games & move selection with cold "chess engines" (only a recent temporal development) across vast amounts of time. Certainly, it seems the 500 pound gorilla in the room is the fact that, ...we are not even the best practitioners of the game any longer and have been hugely surpassed in proficiency & skill by our own inventions!

That such recent exposure has shaped the play of one, Magnus Carlsen (and all contemporaries) is indubitable, inescapable and landscape shaping fact (of reality, as well as the debate). Thus, "who is the best player" remains an exercise in speculation, though a fun one. Certain obvious logical, historical, anthropological & philosophical truths appear to me here. I contend that any comparison of modern chess professionals and their produced outcome, skill level, complexity of tactical & positional solutions shown in games, ...ranking in caliber of excellence produced (all with the monumental advancements in today's theoretical best practices, historical insights & technological information tools) vs the flaws & qualitative deficiency we perceived to have existed within the games of "masters" in Morphy's 1900 century day, relies at best, upon measures of false concretism.

Firstly, most "master-level-players" of the day culturally eschewed the "game" as a "profession" of any sort, most notably Paul Morphy, not worthy of exclusivity of "professional" pursuit (again, a sentiment widely held & expressed at the time, as it was decades before "chess as a profession" ever existed), which unique mindset-of-the-day goes additionally to cultural, practical and psychologically distinguishing & differentiating factors, which foster & evoke standards of measure that inevitably simply stumbles upon itself as a fallacy of hypostatization (a false concretism).

At best, one can merely speculate. Further substantiating this phenomenon, are the obvious false equivalencies & concrete disparities, so readily glossed over with misleading vividness of scant usable empiricism, for example, which factor in that which eludes empirical measure, such as cultural/anthropological, psychological, practical and philosophical disparities of the day, times and "thought" (notions like "chivalry", for example, ...only one), ...cultural differences in the very psychological & emotional consideration or "treatment" of the Royal Game of the 1900 century. Additionally apparent is the logical diminishment of the crushing weight & ubiquity of "game changing" existence of our fair-comparison-canceling modern devices, ...such as multi-million game databases, centuries of theory, GM crushing Super-Computers and free-to-download (say, ...Stockfish, second only now to Komodo, subsequent to Thoresen's recent TCEC competition) chess playing & analyzing, monster-strong "engines", everywhere & ever-ready to every self-respecting competitive chess players of all strengths (uniquely cascading & colossally building upon surely ratings inflation, if so being & phenomenologically "real", as intelligently argued by many; ...yet my focus remains upon the fairness & usability of the "1900 century comparison debate"); informational technologies which have rearranged the playing field of analogy, long since unleveled & utterly redefined.

These are the debate-destroying, appeal to rational-empirical-science-canceling, modern-equivalency-negating present day factors; which obviously, to me, render any comparison of 1900 century "Player Strength" to 2014 Super-GMs & games, a gross Non-Sequitur. There was not a living man (woman nor child, the likes of Paul), of Morphy's day, that could escape, thwart, prevail against nor match his global "Chess dominance & preeminence", over each & all "available" takers. Morphy was a fully-modern human, with a fully-modern brain, who simply crushed all other fully-modern humans. It was the "game" not yet fully-modern.

However, remember even Fischer said (another espoused "fan" of Morphy) in an interview on Icelandic radio: "Morphy and Capablanca had enormous talent, Steinitz was very great too. Alekhine was great, but I am not a big fan of his. Maybe it’s just my taste. I’ve studied his games a lot, but I much prefer Capablanca and Morphy." He also stated further that Morphy had the talent to beat any player of any era if "given time to study modern theory and ideas". What's cool is you can listen to the MP3 from an imbedded link in the article. I can send ya a hyperlink, if you'd like :).

Paul Morphy was a true child prodigy, never taught the moves, yet mastering the game like a fish to water. At age12, in New Orleans (his & my home town), he spanked Hungarian Master Johann Lowenthal in a three game match, 2.5 of three games! He crushed Adolf Anderssen 7-2, w two draws in a match, while ill with intestinal flu...probably Europe's strongest match player. The German master later opined that Morphy was the strongest player ever to play (at that time). Many sources call Morphy the first modern master, not just the flashy tactician this old fanboy here knows & loves, but well known, at the time as equally masterful in positional play.

You know the story. He handily defeated German master Louis Paulsen, Theodor Lichtenhein, Bird (Bird, in a five master simul for a Queen Victoria, losing only one game), and every other strong master of his day (often blindfolded), both in America and Europe (with the singular exception of the coward, IMHO, Staunton, who evaded him at every turn).

These are the facts of how dominant Morphy was over his contemporaries, going to Fischer's point. While Stockfish & Komodo may rank or rate all of their games well below modern standards, Fischer's point remains. With modern tools, theory, the evolution of the game, data bases & computer engines, the best chess minds of their times (true prodigies, with minds uniquely suited to chess preeminence) would likely still loom larger over most of their contemporaries of today, all things being equal. The human brain has not evolved one iota in 200 years, rather has been fully modern for eons. Capa was lazy by today's standards of the profession and a Bon Vivant skirt chaser, yet was an effortlessly excellent chess player. Morphy hardly studied the game, seeing it as beneath a Tulane educated (University of Louisiana, at the time) Attorney, as a dedicated profession (the very reason he professed & attributed to walking away from chess), yet was a world beater, like Fischer! If you compare then to now, surely the very essence of the Royal Game and thusly it's best practitioners have evolved leaps & bounds, primarily due to information & technology and the concomitant impact upon chess evolution (as argued above)! Consider that in the last 2014 years, information had doubled by 1750, then again by 1950, then again by 1970, ten 1980 or so, ...'till today, where now projections are every two years! The very reality of Moore's Law, the advent & access to personal computers, directly statistically tracked parallel to the progression & developmental evolution of all phases of the game in human preparation & mastery. There's your edge.

The vast difference is thanks wholly to one glaring, landscape altering invention. One consequence, solely attributable to said invention, is that the day will very soon arrive, when the sum-total of accessible "information" created & at our human behest, doubles in days! The Herculean complexity of problems, in now, only merely-imagined orders of magnitude, ...will be solved (many problems mostly created by us) and shall be equivalent-child's-play in soon realized, again, in "qubits states thru fixed Quantum logic gates of Quantum Superposition" of Quantum Super-Computers, crunched in the equally comparative blink-of-an-eye, ...by these "computers". Still called "Computers", yet which, by then, they will be so geometrically advanced (also), as to show merely superficial similarities to what constitutes, is used and referred to as such today. What we call "chess" today, ...how we perceive it, prepare for & play it, measure its accuracy and highest levels of proficiency, perfection & skill, record & later refer to it, analyze it and receive our daily dose of perspective-rendering humility therefrom, ...is defined by the development of & meteoritic doubling in raw power and mind-numbing speed, complexity & ability (both realized & potential), of the "computer". The 1900 century "player" and the "game" are merely superficially the same to those of today. To even seriously consider a fair comparison of 1900 century chess to that of 2014 play & players (done by statisticians, mathematicians, computer scientists & GM level chess players), absent the equally weighty & essential humanity expounding, ...debate-scope, rules, terms & boundary defining contributions & considered, perspective-rendering opinions of several brilliant Ph.D cultural anthropologists and philosophers (regardless of their chess ratings :), is inherently an appeal to incomplete authority, ...Ad Verecundiam Infectus ;').

Like Nakamra also graciously admitted, transport todays young Titans back in time, and Morphy would crush, just like he admitted Fischer would do. I'm just saying, blanket statements (some here, to be sure, yet ubiquitous on the subject) sweeping vast quantities of time, surmising & postulating probable dominance of chess players, then and now, assumes away a sea of consequence and causation, thus inherently subjective. Even up the times & tools, ...well now there's the stuff of epic battles we can only dream about bro. Hey, respectfully though, I think I'm gonna stick with Bobby Fischer on this one ;').

One thing, unfortunately not subject to empiricism, but certainly wonderful, mind-blowing speculation would be the very strength of a young, modern day Morphy or Fischer (obviously a vastly different set of "nurture" molding circumstances, yet those minds & genes in those chess wunderkinds today), with all the progression of technological & historical wherewithal @ their fingertips! Yea, ...I know, obviously I beg many time-travel, paradoxical questions, as much of that history was gifted us by these two marvelous Chess Geniuses, who absolutely dominated their respective chess eras & contemporaries. Interesting & fun, nonetheless and the quintessential "Chess Movie" for the likes of us maybe ;'). Thanks for contributing to this thread! My imagination is surely sparked by indulging the wonderful fiction of matching my favorite chess pioneer & player, Paul Morphy, against the best of the rest ;')!

A wonderful semi-fictional book on the amazing life of Paul Morphy is "The Chess Players", by Francis Parkinson Keyes (copyright 1960). Enjoy!

Peace!