The Complete Guide to Morphy Attack (includes 7 amazing queen-traps)

In this post, I will show you the variations of Morphy Attack, and introduce you to the most dangerous traps exist in this attack.

After reading this post, you'll get familiar with the Morphy attack. You'll also learn seven ways to trap your opponent's queen and defeat your opponent early in the middle game by using the Morphy Attack.

A few words about Paul Morphy

Morphy Attack is named after Paul Morphy, an American chessplayer who was the best chessplayer in the world back in the 1870's. Many regard Morphy as the first modern chessplayer and the founder of modern chess, along with Wilhelm Steinitz (an Austrian chessplayer who was the first world chess champion).

Paul Morphy is known for his adventurous style of play. Many of his games included creative sacrifices. Some of those sacrifices are shown in this post.

A few words about the Morphy Attack

Morphy attack is the most famous attack that was invented by Paul Morphy.

The trap starts with the move 1.e4 (The other move, 1.d4, which is popular nowadays, was very rare back in the 19th century and considered by many players a mistake. For this reason, many games in the 19th century started with the move 1.e4 rather than 1.d4).

The Morphy Attack is a variation of the Italian game (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4). However, it can be reached in other ways, like the Urusov Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.o-o).

This is the starting position of the Morphy Attack:

The next move by Black, which is very common in this position, is the move Nxe4. Then white should respond with the move Re1 and the Morphy Attack begins!

The Morphy Attack

Instead of writing a very long post, I decided to be more efficient and so I put all the variations (and all the explanations about the variations) in the following window. Note that it might take you a more than an hour to learn all the variations.

After learning & understanding the ideas of this attack, you probably agree that it's one of the most beautiful, creative and adventurous attacks in classic chess.

I hope you found this post interesting, and I hope you learned something new.

See you soon,

Nuclear_Knight