Morphy the Terrible

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.  

 You make your argument convincing but for the doubters, they are convince because some dubious study claiming thet are mere 1900 elo to expert level.

I would like to think that the kid who started this thread 5 years ago now finds this all a bit embarrassing.

I agree with everything Smyslov said. But players of his time knew how to deal with dangerous opponents. To say that Morphy played at about 2350 strength in the time before Steinitz is to say that Morphy was about a generation ahead of his time. Steinitz didn't surpass Morphy until about 20 years after Morphy retired from chess. But Steinitz did surpass him. Zukertort played in the style of Morphy, and about as well as Morphy. Yet Steinitz showed that he had learned from Morphy and won the 1872 and 1886 matches pretty convincingly. 

I wanted to correct a misperception that I may have caused. I didn't mean to suggest that Blackburne was only expert strength. He didn't play well against Steinitz in their match, but he had some brilliant games and tournaments, most notably Berlin 1881 (1st ahead of Zukertort, Winawer and Chigorin).

Blackburne started playing tournament chess about the time that Morphy retired from chess. He was of the next generation and learned a great deal from Morphy. He clearly was much stronger than Staunton. As early as 1873, he finished ahead of Anderssen and others, and  second only to Steinitz at Vienna. 

Blackburne created many beautiful games, and was on the losing end of one of Zukertort's greatest games. 

Every student of chess should study the games of Morphy, and the best games of Blackburne and others from the Romantic period of chess history!

Most GMs have studied these games!

It does not seem to be easy to identify world champions who have argued that Morphy (with proper opening knowledge) would be pretty dominant against modern players. Of course you are free to have that opinion yourself if you want.

Are you trying to indicate that Morphy gave a blindfold simul against 10+ people?

For the record, I've given 2-board blindfold simuls and my highest rating was under 2200.  I know some masters rated 2200-2300 who have given larger blindfold simuls,  but that sort of exhibition isn't as popular now as it was in Morphy's day.

Afaik, Timur Gareev currently holds the record for blindfold simuls.

Chess should be fun..For me, open games are fun. Closed games can be tedious and slow = boring.

 I agree, chess should be fun; if we studying correctly we benefit greatly. The foundation to any player growth is to Morphy games, we become stronger as a player because if our opponent break opening principles we have the tools to punish them. We should be able to play any position well, close or open, too many player try to keep the position close to avoid tactics, its their shortcoming. 

From what I know, he blindfold simuled most of the great players in the world and thought they were amateurs. 

Those old games are interesting to look at and the players made some good moves but what it means to 'study' them I don't understand exactly. What exactly is there to 'study'? Who knows what the players were planning? Maybe the moves were bad - just 'study' the good ones I guess. Every game is different so 'studying' this one isn't going to help much it's probably safe to say.

Well, if you look at his Wiki then you should find all the names you need.

Staunton purposely avoided playing against Morphy for fear of humiliation.

Collectively, Morphy's score against Adolf Andersson, who was later contender for world champion against Steinitz, was twelve wins, three losses and two draws.  That is unheard of.  These aren't casual games, either, they were matches.  Andersson was considered the strongest European player in the late 1850s and Morphy beat him easily.  If he did that, then my reason suspects me to believe that he also would have beaten Steinitz easily.  Either way, it puts Morphy at world-champion contender level for that time.

I think the argument against Morphy is that his opponents were terrible, but if you can give me the name of one professional opponent Morphy didn't clobber OTB, chances are I haven't heard of him.  Morphy was so good he made people look bad.  You can argue he'd get clobbered today, but that's like saying Archimedes would be dumbfounded by a 737 flying overhead today.  

As for the simul stuff, I don't know if he did or not against the best players in Europe, but he did give blindfold simuls a lot, spotting rooks and knights and beating everyone easily.  Those players albeit weren't very strong, so therefore Morphy was terrible because anyone can give blindfold simuls to more than eight people at a time, spot material, and win perfectly (cough...)

True that, but it doesn't change the statistics. 

L. Kieseritsky, D. Harrwitz, S. Rosenthal, J. Loewenthal, to name a few people in the mid 19th century who made their living on chess.

batgirl Can I ask something?

Full name of Kieseritsky is - Lionel Adalbert Bagration Felix Kieseritzky. 

What is the story behind the name "Bagration"? It is the official last name of the Georgian royal dynasty that ruled Georgia for 15 centuries. 

I have no idea about his name. Kieseritsky who was mainly Germanic  and possibly part Polish, originally came from Dorpat Livonia - where Estonia and Lithuania meet today.

Here' all I know of Kieseritsky: https://www.chess.com/article/view/lionel-kieseritzky

Thanks, Batgirl!

I thought you'd given up on this thread.