Paul Morphy is the greatest player of all time.

Morphy played far better chess in blindfold simuls, than people in this thread who criticize him, will ever do otb.

     Morphy was an opera devotee, attending every performance of the New Orleans Opera. Box seats at one of Europe's premier opera houses was a great treat for him; it's likely he didn't pay much attention to the chess game the Duke of Brunswick sprang on him unexpectedly after inviting him to share his box. It's not likely that he missed the pedestrian win; playing for the spectacular attack was just part of the game's ethos at that time.

But if he were in a situation where there were a relative challenge that could actually punish him for "playing to suit the ethos" wouldn't and play  3 terrible moves 7 moves in, the Opera Game becomes another draw.

You cannot use your imagination to just assume that Morphy would automatically maintain his spectacular ideas AND augment the ideas of the engine alike. Morphy's competition is extremely crucial to determining how good he is. If you're playing 1200's at a 2000+ level, you obviously will be playing at 95+% regularly because you pretty much have to wait 15 moves AT MOST before your inferior opponent makes a bad move that can give you a decisive advantage.

Using this logic, if GothamChess played chess in the 1860's and had access to handbooks that few others had from the best legends of chess at that point, he'd be smacking everyone easily simply because they're booty cheeks modern-day. Obviously, Morphy is much better than Gotham because of his innovations in the name of chess, but you cannot credit him for understanding how to survive and attack in chess, when it was apparent that many of his opponents did not. 

I watched a random Paul Morphy match, in which he squared off against a supposed 2300 rated chess player. 2300. By move 12, this 2300 rated blundered TWICE and lost hastily. Do you know what someone would say to you if you told them you blundered twice in the opening? "This is why you need to see what your move does: look for checks, captures, and threats." They'd think you are a 900 rated. The ratings were EXTREMELY inflated back then, and in reality, many of Morpy's opponents would be 1200 rated while he would be much -- MUCH -- higher.

     WALKINGLOSS: My point was that Morphy didn't take that game seriously, and probably looked for some spectacular way to punish the Duke of Brunswick for trick him into a chess game by inviting him to share his box at the opera. 

      Naturally, the Duke and a lot of Morphy's other opponents didn't know any opening theory as there wasn't much in their day. And positional ideas started with Morphy so those were unknown to the rest of the world. Morphy sought out the best opponents he could find in Europe, including the man (Andersson) generally regarded as #1 in the world, and handily defeated all comers.

     Incidentally, ratings weren't  invented until after World War II, the system had to be fine-tuned a couple of times after that, and is totally unreliable guesses for players from previous eras.

pfren and many others never take into account the historical aspect of the game, when they criticize Morphy, and other great players of the past, so their reasoning is flawed to begin with. 

"It's not likely that he missed the pedestrian win; playing for the spectacular attack was just part of the game's ethos at that time."

This pretty much sums it up.

If you want to be greatest you don't have to be the best ever (because advances over centuries will always invite arguments if you were the very best). To be the greatest you need to be the FIRST, and the first to do it in a manner never before seen. And Morphy was the very first who utterly and overwhelmingly dominated his peers, and in a manner that has only been replicated by a handful of those who followed him.