Morphy Number

Mine is 7. 

I have played Yi Liu who has played Stephen Solomon who has played David Smerdon who has played Bob Wade who has played Savielly Tartakower who has played James Mortimer who has played Paul Morphy.

Do simuls count?

If so, then I have a Morphy number of 5, from playing against Susan Polgar.

EDIT: I've also played Larry D. Evans, but that still gives me 5

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/trivia2

I played NN who played Morphy

 I'm pretty sure we won't get a lower number than that.  So what do you say we go ahead and crown Ivandh the winner.

Cool..i have a Morphy number of 4.  I have played both Max Euwe and George Koltanowski.

Difficult to see 4 being beaten (except by Ivandh!)

 As of December 2007, the highest finite Bacon number reported by the Oracle of Bacon is 8

876-5309

Does that Yi Liu happen to play minesweeper? I remember a Yi Liu who was threatening my (then) #3 spot in the Australian minesweeper rankings (I'm now #2). And people who are good at minesweeper are likely to be good at chess, and vice versa (pattern recognition, problem solving etc.)

Fail.

Interesting concept.  I'm a 5, thanks to my game in a tournament vs. Ruben Shocron -- a fairly obscure Argentinian master, though he's Game #6 in Fischer's 60 Memorable Games -- who played Gligoric, who is a 3.

My Morphy number is at most 7, via;

Morphy 0

John Owen 1

Michell 2

Botvinnik 3

Kholmov 4 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphy_number "For example, Garry Kasparov, along with most current top players, has a Morphy Number of 5: Kasparov played Ratmir Kholmov (Morphy number 4), who played Mikhail Botvinnik (Morphy number 3), who played Reginald Michell (Morphy number 2), who played John Owen (Morphy number 1)")

Nigel Short 5... at most (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1124073)

Kacparov 6... at most

Me 7.. at most

With a Kasparov number of 2, I can't be sure I have a Morphy number of less than 7. Of the MN3 players, I think the only one I have even seen in the flesh is Bent Larsen (he played at the Hasting Premier a couple of decades back, while I was playing in a graded tournament). The wikipedia list seems woefully incomplete - one would expect the number of players in each group to grow much more rapidly.

My Morphy number is 6. I played Iweta Rajlich (Radziewicz) who played Pia Cramling who played Bent Larsen, whose Morphy number is 3.

I've been to New Orleans a couple of times. Does that count for anything?

I've played against three of the Wikipedia list with a fairly satisfying score of 1.0/7