The legendary opera game

There are various ways to defeat your opponent at chess. Making him resign is one, Taking the position to win end game is another. Well, there is one more method where you smothered your opponent to death by slowly grabbing him like a python.

Our protagonist is Paul Morphy and his opponent is  Duke Karl and this game is famously called, "The opera game". The game took place in Paris in 1858. We will first understand the game and then I will give some information about the legend as he was one of the world champions and his games are ideally the way chess teacher uses them as a study tool to teach chess.

The opera game-

The Opera Game (also known as the Opera House Game) is one of the most famous chess games of all time, some think it is the most famous one ever. It is also considered to be Paul Morphy's best game.

The game was played in 1858 in an opera house in Paris. Morphy had the white pieces and played against two noblemen who consulted with each other to play the black pieces. Morphy's opponents were Duke Karl II of Brunswick and the French aristocrat Count Isouard de Vauvenargues.

Morphy shows the importance of the roles of development, Sacrifices, and combinations in this game. For these reasons (and more), many chess coaches show this game to their students.

The Game-

So morphy played many games with king pawn opening so he starts with an e4 opponent who plays e5. morphy develops the knight to f3 attacking the pawn on e5 and black plays the defensive move at that time which is d6.

Now the d6 move indicates the Philidor defense one of the drawbacks of this move is it blocks black own dark square bishop from developing. 

This is certainly not a bad move but the move you should understand if you're not at their level of understanding at chess.

As we and morphy have reached this position if not we morphy did know the idea that when we can take equity of center with two pawns we should do it so he plays the move d4. black pins the knight by bxf3. 

here in this position, paul took on e5 creating the threat that if black takes with dxe then morphy would trade queens, and black looses castling rights as shown below,

Loosing castling right line -

so this is not where black wants to be at the start of the game so black decides to first take knight by bxf3 and then morphy took with the queen and then black takes on e5

here morphy sees that f7 is weak and he can create a mate threat while developing a minor piece so he develops bc4. Black avoids mates by developing Nf6 ( also called interposing in chess). At this position, we will start developing our minor pieces but not paul because he sees geometric ways how his queen and bishop can work. So morphy plays Qb3 attacking b7 and f7 at the same time. Black plays Qe7 with the intention that if morphy takes on b7 black will force the queen to trade on b4.

Now Morphy is an artist so he was not planning for one pawn advantage also he wanted to see the opera performance so wanted to defeat them in the quickest way possible so he develops the knight on c3. 

Black sees that the threat on b7 is again active so he plays c6 now the queen protects the b7 pawn. Morphy has a chance to castle but as I say to the castle and be safe morphy didn't want a long game so he kept the possibility of castling on both sides later by first playing bg5 and pinning the knight to the queen. Black plays b5 attacking our bishop and here I will give you the moves think about what morphy played at this moment it's your chance to be Paul Morphy.

so in this position, paul morphy decided to show the first brilliancy of the game by sacrificing the knight on b5 cxb5, bxb5 black plays Nd7 to block check and here paul castles long bringing rook in the attack. 

Black with no option playing Rd8. Now paul morphy decides it's too much and I have to end this game quickly so he plays Rxd7, Rook takes the rook on d7. Paul brings another rook into the attack by Rh to d1.  

Now that we all know the strongest piece is the queen so black decides to trade the queen by playing the move Qe6. Paul, as we know, was an artist he knew that his queen was not the most important piece in this game it was his rook. So Paul played bd7 now that queen is out of pin black takes with knight only to witness the legendary queen sacrifice as morphy played Qb8 black played Nxb8 and got mated as Rd8 is checkmate.

As you can witness here the understanding paul morphy had was way ahead of his time the piece coordination and sacrifice at the right moment makes him one of the top chess players till now if you see any blog or any top 10 chess players of all time this man will be present there so I have to make you more familiar to the person.

History of paul morphy - 

Paul Charles Morphy (June 22, 1837 – July 10, 1884) was an American chess player. He won the tournament of the First American Chess Congress of 1857. Sources differ about when and how Morphy learned how to play chess. According to his uncle, Ernest Morphy, no one formally taught Morphy how to play chess; rather, Morphy learned on his own as a young child simply from watching others play. After silently watching a lengthy game between Ernest and Alonzo( father), which they abandoned as drawn, young Paul surprised them by stating that Ernest should have won. His father and uncle had not realized that Paul knew the moves, let alone any chess strategy. They were even more surprised when Paul proved his claim by resetting the pieces and demonstrating the win his uncle had missed.

Bobby Fischer ranked Morphy among the ten greatest chess players of all time, and described him as "perhaps the most accurate player who ever lived". 

To conclude this I would like you to take note of the following theme in a match we saw above-
1- Piece activity 
2- Geometric Positioning of the piece 
3- Development 
4- Building attack
5- Double check
6- Sacrifice
7- King safety