is there any value to studying the games of Paul Morphy given the evolution of the game

Morphy's most famous game? The 'Opera' game.

Note the power of white's Queen going to b3.
Although not by the usual route to get there.
I was tempted to think the losing move was b5.
But instead of replying to Bc4 with Nf6 another Idea was Qf6 instead.
But Stockfish evaluation just now had +2 for white before b5 and +3 for white after b5.

64 stockfish can't beat super gms with piece odds. Try playing sf with piece odds yourself. It will go better than you expect.

Morphy also didn't beat strong opponents with piece odds. He beat amateurs that way, occasionally strong amateurs.

Out of curiosity, I looked up chessmetrics for the estimated rating of Morphy's strong opponents.

In 1959, when Morphy was on the top, both Anderssen and Löwenthat are estimated over 2600, which would be a strong GM nowadays. (So much about your "they wouldn't be titled today" statement). And Morphy had a more than 100 point lead.

http://www.chessmetrics.com/cm/CM2/SingleMonth.asp?Params=199510SSSSS3S088959185906111000000000019610100

Hi !
You meant the year 1859. Not 1959.
There's been a debate on the website about how the chess greats of long ago would do if they could be brought forward from the past with time machines.
I agree that their level of play back then would be GM level now ...
but that's without giving them some time to review various top level games since their time - and to read the new theory and to use computers and the internet - including the tactics puzzles.
And to use modern comforts including medical. Modern general knowledge.
Idea: with a year of prep - how many points could players like Morphy and Lasker and Capablanca add to their actual playing strength?
100 ? 150 ? 200 ?
They were very good at using what they had. And adapting. Better than the competition.
Happens in many sports.
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there's also the idea of 'talent pool' and 'population base'.
Players like Capablanca and Tal were the result of a kind of 'farm system' that discovers extreme talent. Happens outside of sports too.
Like in acting and writing and music.
One could argue that each 'population base' that the greats came from was much smaller - especially the population base of chessplayers.
But those population bases could be added together ...
And would those bases of population be a sufficient microcosm of the player population base of today?
But I like the idea of this forum ...
which has a parallel to studying mathematics and science by studying their history.

Oopsie! Embarrassing typo on my part. Sorry.

@magipi
We could see it as impressive that Morphy played at the level he did -
even back before the Civil War.
No telephones. Electricity and lightbulbs? Cars? Pasteur breakthroughs?
I'm thinking maybe - steamships - trains - telegraphs.
Which only 'really got going' after the Civil War. Like long after. Decades.
Checked on all of that just now.
Morphy probably went to Paris on a ship with sails and steam but it probably had electric light.
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modern players take all that 'for granted'.
Morphy would play a lot better now if 'beamed up Scotty'

Who said piece? Typical odds of the time the very best players might give players the next step down would be pawn and move (odds giver would play black with their f-pawn removed) or pawn and two (f-pawn removed and white gets two first moves)

Rybka was able to draw a match against a human GM (Dzindzichashvili) at pawn and move as far back as 2008. Since then the best engines have gotten about 500 ratings points stronger.

[edit: and when I say 500 points stronger that's just the software. that wouldn't account for going from a four core computer of the time to a modern 16 core CPU with a faster clock to boot]

Someone (Ken Regan) has. Of course, as an advocate for Morphy, I don't like his results.

https://cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/papers/pdf/Reg12IPRs.pdf