Morphy the Terrible

Choose any 50 consecutive games that Staunton played and analyse them without a computer. You will quickly find that his play was weaker than today's expert strength players. And this is a guy who considered himself the best in the world. Blackburne played some brilliant games. So have most experts. But he also played some howlers. The mark of skill isn't the best games played, it isn't the worst games played, it's how consistently you can play close to your best. 

Wesley So currently has a 62 game unbeaten streak. None of the players from the 19th Century were as consistently good as the best players from the 20th Century, or the 21st Century. 

I have favorite athletes, but I know that Jesse Owens' best wasn't as good as Usain Bolt's. Mark Spitz wasn't faster than Michael Phelps. Bobby Fischer wasn't better than Garry Kasparov. And Paul Morphy, for all his brilliance, wasn't better than today's GMs. Sure, he was dangerous in open positions. But chess has progressed since Morphy's day.

^The issue with that assumption is that we're using today's metrics to define the quality of past players. This is regarding human chess, of course - it's unfortunately indisputable that engines are a good judge of chess *quality*. 

But if you have an era where players have a certain style, then to get best results against them, you should play a certain way as well - if players played much more solidly, you change to adapt to that.

How would an expert today do against Staunton, given some sort of time machine? My guess is not too well. 

Cherub, read what Karpov and others have said about style. 

Style is a weakness. As Kasparov said, if I know a player's strengths, I also know his weaknesses. Your entire argument about style is an acknowledgement of the weakness of players from the past.

And seriously, go play through Staunton's games. I am quite confident that when I was playing tournament chess regularly, I could have beaten him in a match. I would have lost to Anderssen or Morphy, but Staunton wasn't nearly as good as he pretended to be.

"... the games of Rubinstein, Capablanca, Morphy, Siegbert Tarrasch, Harry Pillsbury and Paul Keres are strongly recommended - as well as those of more recent players who have a somewhat classical style, like Fischer, Karpov, Viswanathan Anand and Michael Adams. ..." - GM Andrew Soltis (2010)

I been going over and studying and analyzing past games, it easy to make blanket statement and repeat what other players and GM said about these great past masters; unless you yourself have gone over these games yourself, you don't know how well these past masters played. Even fide master don't understand past ,master moves and make bad assumption how horrible they played, what we think is "bad positional move" to these great past masters had there logic and is totally correct, they analyze and came to the right conclusion the move they choose. I give two games that a very strong fide master make the wrong assessment about the so call "bad positional move".  

Kindasponget and BoogleMeBrains this will be a learning experience for you, these past masters found their move a lot time otb not through a computer and home analysis, that is why I admire them so much. 

Most players ( low masters to expert level) will lost to Arthur J. Mass, we are not really that good, I am referring to low master and expert.

Anderssen computer like calculation is unbelievable; This why I said he can beat any IM and some low GMs, the way he beat Steinitz is unreal and amazing calculation abilities. The study said Anderssen is a mere expert 2100 elo, I never seen experts attack so well and accurately, this type of attack is GM level.

 Don't forget that todays' players have the advantage looking back thru time at all past recorded games..

So how long would it take for a Morphy or a Capablanca to get up to speed?

Someone probably mentioned this by now but why exactly would black play 18...Ke8? That allows 19. Nc7+, a forked check on the rook allowing for material gain for white. 

hi I think if black move B fe7 and Castel make its .won

I recently quoted Vishy Anand, but look at other World Champions:

Jose Capablanca:

"He plays in the style of Morphy, they say, and if it is true that the goddess of fortune has endowed me with his talent, the result [of the match with Emanuel Lasker] will not be in doubt. The magnificent American master had the most extraordinary brain that anybody has ever had for chess. Technique, strategy, tactics, knowledge which is inconceivable for us; all that was possessed by Morphy fifty-four years ago."

Vasyly Smyslov:

"There is no doubt that for Morphy chess was an art, and for chess Morphy was a great artist. His play was captivated by freshness of thought and inexhaustible energy. He played with inspiration, without striving to penetrate into the psychology of the opponent; he played, if one can express it so, "pure chess". His harmonious positional understanding the pure intuition would have made Morphy a highly dangerous opponent even for any player of our times."

Now I would trust these World Champions, than some random keyboard warriors, who are patzers and have never achieved anything remarkable in chess. Smyslov was Soviet and unlike Fischer, he did not have any special preference towards Americans...

Some things you may not know about JH Blackburne:
https://www.chess.com/article/view/problems-of-the-black-death2

Capablanca did not live to see 1948 when Botvinnik became world champion. Smyslov, like many others, regarded Morphy as a giant, but the quote did not show him as assessing Morphy to have been better than all modern players.

He could not have been better. It is very hard to win a game in which you lose the opening. These world champions appreciated that in terms of pure skill and talent was at least on par with modern masters. 

When Morphy arrived in England, first English masters destroyed him the openings, but through his brilliant skill, he out-calculated them in the middle-game. He would not be able to turn around weak positions against 20th century world champions for sure. But if he had proper opening, he would be pretty dominant. And that's what these World Champions are arguing. Today, 8 year olds are being presented with chess tricks and patterns that Morphy had to discover himself. It is unfair. He adapted very quickly after he arrived in England though. His openings became better, I may say he knew openings of his time very well. 

If he was born in 1990s or early 2000s, he would be a 2800 GM. 

Otherguyl wrote:

"... if [Morphy] had proper opening, he would be pretty dominant. And that's what these World Champions are arguing. ..."

I have not seen Smyslov arguing that. Capablanca did not live to see the chess world of 1948 and beyond.

"His harmonious positional understanding the pure intuition would have made Morphy a highly dangerous opponent even for any player of our times." - Smyslov(who defeated Botvinnik in a match)

"To this day Morphy is an unsurpassed master of the open games. Just how great was his significance is evidant from the fact that after Morphy nothing substantially new has been created in this field. Every player- from beginner to master- should in this praxis return again and again to the games of the American genius." - Botvinnik.

Otherguyl wrote:

"'His harmonious positional understanding the pure intuition would have made Morphy a highly dangerous opponent even for any player of our times.' - Smyslov ..."

"Dangerous" and "dominant" do not seem to me to have the same meaning.

Otherguyl wrote:

"... 'To this day Morphy is an unsurpassed master of the open games. ...' - Botvinnik."

"unsurpassed master of the open games" does not seem to me to mean "dominant" in chess in general. Also, it might be of interest to know the date of the quote in order to know what "today" Botvinnik was writing about.

What is your point though? If you time-travelled in 1860 and brought Morphy here, he would get crushed in nearly every game in super-tournaments. Nobody is arguing that. Morphy's strength(opening+middlegame+endgame) could have been 2500, not more. If you gave him a year of training, he could get to 2700 for sure. But if he was actually born in 1990s or 2000s, he would learn chess tricks and patterns at the age of 8 and in case of good time investment, he would be 2800.

I don't think anyone argues that Morphy's actual playing strength was not more than 2500. 

At the age of 13 he was making mistakes that 8 year old would not, because nobody told him. At the age of 17 he discovered those chess patterns and tricks. At the age of 20 he was already pretty good. 

If you look at chess history, Lasker was 2700 player according to Chessmetrics before Capablanca arrived, competition forced him to cross 2800. The same with Kasparov vs Karpov. If you are beating everyone easily, you feel chess is over and you need no improvement. Why we ask from Morphy to make engine top moves, is beyond me. 

From which point(strength or ELO) do people start doing blindfold exhibitions?  2300 players are not giving Blindfold simuls against 10+ people I am sure. 

 When Karpov was dominating in tournaments and matches, his style was safe and risk free opening and everyone wanted to copy Karpov; along came Kasparov and now its aggressive opening and dynamic style. Carlsen is too passive and one the reason he has high drawing ratio; in his match Karjakin he prove his style is inadaquate and leads too many draws, I don't know if he will be world champion too long, possibly So will beat him, So style is very similar to Fischer, he can play any position well. Here is game Fischer played (W:  Fischer vs. B: Andersson, he use the same plan ( rook on g1 and pushing the g-pawn g4 to g5) that Anderssen use against Steinitz ( refer to page 27 to view the two games). Fischer study and analyze Morphy and Anderssen games, its one the reason he can attack so well.