The Devils checkmate

Let’s have an introduction about this famous painting, “The Devil’s Checkmate,” or “Die Schachspieler,” which translates to “The Chess Players.” It was created by the German artist Friedrich Moritz August Retzsch (1779–1857). The story goes that Paul Morphy once looked at this painting and analyzed it for quite some time. When the tour group realized he was missing, the tour guide found him still standing there, studying the artwork. Some say that Morphy requested the painting be taken down or at least have its name changed, explaining that White still had a move and could still win the game.

Let’s take a look at what we know together, shall we?

This position came up in an article after Paul Morphy made his claim.

However, Black is winning and is unlikely to mess up. This position looks completely wrong compared to the actual painting. A few people, including GothamChess, made a short video about this, and I gathered a basic idea of what it might look like.

not as bad for white but still losing 

however... i notice something a little off about the painting that i find in every version i see 

the piece on a1 looks more like a queen rather than a rook! 

if we look at the pieces on d2.  and h1. there are quite similar 

and the piece on a1. looks some what identical to the black queen 

if my theory is correct it would look something like this

another thing i want to point out is that how can we tell which piece is which! the ones that i struggle is the bishop and the knight what if we reversed it 

this would give us a free queen 

This is a big difference in the game, as White can capture the black piece.

Problem solved?

Nope! Because, even a queen down, Black is still winning! However, as Paul Morphy said,(im paraphrasing) it’s not over and it’s not checkmate — White can still win, because it’s not over till it’s over.

after i saw this position i was curious how good at chess does black need to be in order to pull a win, so i put Stockfish as white and battle as many bots of different elo level 

Jimmy (600) lost to Stockfish because he lost his winning position on move 2 and lost the whole game on the 11th. move

Nelson (1300) lost in the 9th. move

Wally (1800) lost in the 17th move

Nora (2200) lost in the 19th move

Luke AI (2500) drew the  game to Stockfish at 75 moves!

and since this is a Paul Morphy game i thought to finish my experiment with the Paul Morphy bot

Paul Morphy (2600) after 118 moves it ended a draw

lets just say the man with the white pieces unleashed his inner Stockfish 

As for the original painting, no one knows where it is. It was sold, so we may never know what the original looked like, and we can’t really see what was happening on that board, even with modern technology today.