Morphy the Terrible

So, Morphy was a bad chess player just because he died 150 years ago?  Chess as we know it today solidified in the early 1700s.  It began to even be recorded shortly thereafter, but it's unlikely you could go out and get a book like Fischer's 60 memorable games.  It was individually learned.  I haven't read, but I'm pretty sure there was nothing like what we would recognize as a chess coach.  Tournament level play was a relatively new institution.  And of course, there were no chess engines to learn from.  May as well criticize Shakespeare for inventing new words to put in his poems.

Who wrote that? Some of what has been written:

"... [Morphy's] real abilities were hardly able to be tested. ... The titanic struggles of the kind we see today [Morphy] could not produce because he lacked the opposition. ... Anderssen could attack brilliantly but had an inadequate understanding of its positional basis. ... Morphy remains one of the giants of chess history. ..." - GM Reuben Fine

And even GM Josh Friedel said, "... he was the best player of his time and by quite a ways ..."

By the way, Morphy's death was only about 13 decades ago.

I actually strongly agree. I agree with Ben Finegold's opinion in that I'm sort of ashamed that Steinitz was world champion.

      Lawson was very astute and able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Fred Edge's reporting and observations were accurate, his opinions obviously biased.  He had an agenda but not a very closeted one.  Fiske caaled Edge's book a gossipy acount, but that's what made it addictive.  Reuben Fine on the other hand, while one of the greatest players in the first half of the 20th century, was, at best, a lackadaisical historian who had *his* own agenda, one much harder to decipher than that of Edge.  I trust his objective game analysis, but not his conclusions or assumptions most of which are skewed. 

      Morphy was a man, not a god.  He made errors, had bad days and often played the man rather than the board.  He played 5  serious matches. The ones vs Löwenthal, Anderssen and Harrwitz are obvious. His match vs de Rivière was to fulfill promise, but de Rivière, the best French player of his day, is often more underrated than he deserved.  Morphy's fifth match was with James Thompson at knight odds.  This match is often dismissed as a variant, but that denies the reality of chess at that time.  
     Löwenthal, a voice of chess during that period expressed, "I am decidedly of the opinion that his [Morphy's] winning the match at the large odds of a Knight to a player like Mr. Thompson, is the most marvelous feat which ever a master of his rank has performed. Neither La Bourdonnais, M'Donnell nor Philidor could ever have accomplished a similar task."
       Interestingly enough, Karparov had some misgivings about his pawn and move match with an IM (Terence Chapman), rated 600 pts. lower.  Although he was successful, I think it demonstrates, first, the exquisite abilities of modern chess players whereas such a rating difference translates into such a minor handicap and second, the extent of Morphy's dominance over his peers.

      It's kind of silly, to say the least, to worry about whether Morphy could have beaten Steinitz, Lasker, Reuben Fine or whomever.  It's even sillier to wonder what Morphy would have accomplished were he alive today.  Morphy was Morphy, a product of his time outside of which he is no longer Morphy.  He was one of the shapers of how chess is played today...without "Morphy" there would have been no "Steinitz" and without "Steinitz" there would have been no "Lasker,"  etc. 

I couldn't have said it better. Especially the last paragraph.

Oh yeah, that is soo true, such an overrated humand being.

I wonder how many healthy opponents Morphy beat? If we can make excuses for Morphy, we can also make excuses for his opponents. 

It's perfectly legitimate to wonder what would have happened in a Morphy-Steinitz match. They were contemporaries, and this is one of the great unplayed matches of chess history. It goes along with Lasker-Rubinstein, Lasker-Capa II, Capa-Alekhine II, and Karpov-Fischer as one of the great matches that should have been played. 

By the late 1860s, Steinitz was already playing at a level that would have challenged Morphy. A match between these two giants would have forced Morphy to improve his game, and perhaps to add a technical side that was lacking in his pre-Civil War games. 

Steinitz proved he could succeed against Morphy's style of chess by beating Gunsberg (6-4 with 9 draws) and Blackburne (7-0-0), despite suffering a heavy cold against Gunsberg.

I don't find it at all silly to analyse the play of Steinitz and Morphy to predict who might have won such a match. The chess world was robbed of the great match. I tend to agree with Reuben Fine's assessment that the myth of Morphy was greater than his actual play. 

Still, Morphy and Anderssen showed us how to play the open game. Steinitz showed us how to play the closed game. They both deserve to be studied by any fan of chess history, or even any student of the game. Carlsen clearly studied his Morphy.

These aren't excuses.... a win is a win and a loss is a loss whatever the situation.  But knowing the situation gives a certain insight. 

It might be  legitimate, even fun,  to wonder ... but it's somewhat pointless to speculate what might have been. 

"Closeted" or not, "gossipy" or not, a bias is a bias and that has to be kept in mind when considering Edge's judgments.

Why do YOU have a big problem with gippsies?

It seems to me that, in this particular issue, it is his game analysis that is relevant. Just about everybody, Finegold included, agrees that Morphy's 1857-1858 opponents were very different from what one faces today, and that seems to me to be the central point. Just in the past few decades, a number of books about Morphy have been published and I have not seen a single one disagree with what I quoted in #397.

Sure it does. David Lawson did as did most serious historians.  

That seems to me to be pretty close to what GM Reuben Fine indicated when he wrote about Morphy's abilities not being tested by 1857-1858 opponents.

Whatever Lawson did before writing, I don't think it is appropriate to assume he necessarily made the correct decision when relying on an Edge judgment in his writing.

I have not seen any authority say that de Rivière was anywhere near Löwenthal, Anderssen, and Harrwitz in playing ability. I have not seen any authority say that one gets good rating data from games at odds or from games against very inferior opponents.

And with which , for the most part, I agree.   What I would take issue with is the inference that Morphy's opposition was lacking.  In fact they were the standard of the times.  What else could they be??    Morphy's opponents were different than those today because the mid 19th century wasn't the 21st century.   So the really real question should be why Morphy wasn't more like his opponents (as he should have been), not why his opponents weren't like the ones today (which they could never have been).  Fine, in his Psychology of the Chess Player, would criticize a Romantic player for his lack of positional considerations , ignoring the fact that positional principles hadn't even been developed in Anderssen's time and were only a vague notion.  It's this type of anachronistic reasoning that I take issue with.     

What "rating data" ?   There were no ratings back then.  But in comparing chess players, odds was indeed a measure commonly employed.  

I can't say *how* strong de Rivière was,  but he was stronger than most people seem to assume.  Was he stronger than  Löwenthal?  I don't know but here's the two times they met OTB- http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?pid=19545&pid2=31145

Here he is vs Harrwitz-  http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?pid=15956&pid2=31145

... and vs Anderssen-  http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?pid=10342&pid2=31145

I'm no authority but they look pretty darn close to me:

de Rivière vs  Löwenthal  +2-0

de Rivière vs  Harrwitz    +1-2

de Rivière vs Anderssen  +5-4=1

I don't know who has been asking "why [Morphy's] opponents weren't like the ones today". I quoted from a GM Reuben Fine book that is, to a large extent, an account of the progress of chess. I did not quote from The Psychology of the Chess Player and would not want to comment on a statement in it without seeing the actual quote. Again, in book after book about Morphy, I have not seen disagreement with what I quoted in #397.

"... We do not see sustained masterpieces; rather flashes of genius. The titanic struggles of the kind we see today [Morphy] could not produce because he lacked the opposition. ... Anderssen could attack brilliantly but had an inadequate understanding of its positional basis. " [ #397]