Forums

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

Sort:
playerafar
Ziryab wrote:

I don’t believe that anyone under 1800 would be ill-served playing Morphy’s openings.

Given that one is going to study GM games or openings or both -
then Morphy - why not?
And strong players in the forum seem to be saying that here.
Maybe Morphy's games are so good for this - that return on investment greatly improves!
The site's been very glitchy the last couple of days though.
Morphy's famous 'Opera' game is here on chess.com but I can't get it to post here.

Lent_Barsen
Ziryab wrote:
Lent_Barsen wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
Snowchlobe wrote:

51 sometimes i get an old chess book and then i start reading it and realise it's not in algebraic notation so now i'm scared to get old books xD

You know, I was once seriously going to try and make a project out of creating a freely redistributable updated ebook edition of Philidor in modern English and algebraic notation

The only edition in English I'm aware of has this kind of super draw-out prose notation.

The image is from Francis Beale’s 1656 collection of Greco’s games. They differ substantially from those you’ll find in databases. However, I created a database that has all of Beale’s collection. Spent a lot of time reading this notation. I did switch colors when Black moves first, as in the example of Fool’s Mate in the image.

BTW, Fool’s Mate and Scholar’s Mate, though in the book, are not credited to Greco. Beale took them from a book by Arthur Saul published about 40 years earlier—1614. There is a copy online that you can read.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A11524.0001.001?view=toc

Excellent. Thanks for the info and contribution.

Lent_Barsen
Snowchlobe wrote:

if he could give them odds and win then they weren't good.

I don't know that this follows. Stockfish could give any human odds, but that doesn't mean no human is "good". It's the difference in strength that matters when giving odds.

playerafar

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.

Snowchlobe

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

magipi
Snowchlobe wrote:

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

Snowchlobe
mikewier wrote:

The ratings from different eras are not intended to be directly compared to one another. They reflect the probability of winning against one’s peers, not some abstract measure of chess strength.

i agree that a 2690 rating in Morphy’s time is weaker than a 2690 rating today. However, they are equivalent in terms of the likelihood of beating their opponents.

playerafar
magipi wrote:
Snowchlobe wrote:

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.
----------------------
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.

magipi
playerafar wrote:
magipi wrote:
Snowchlobe wrote:

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.

Oopsie! Embarrassing typo on my part. Sorry.

playerafar

@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.
----------------
modern players take all that 'for granted'.
Morphy would play a lot better now if 'beamed up Scotty'

Lent_Barsen
Snowchlobe wrote:

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

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]

 
Optimissed
magipi wrote:
Snowchlobe wrote:

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

Optimissed

No-one seems to have done an estimate on how accurate are the estimates of people's ratings from over 150 years ago. They are probably highly inaccurate since most people who waste their time with such things won't take all the critical factors into account. They won''t be very good at it, basically.

Ziryab
Optimissed wrote:

No-one seems to have done an estimate on how accurate are the estimates of people's ratings from over 150 years ago. They are probably highly inaccurate since most people who waste their time with such things won't take all the critical factors into account. They won''t be very good at it, basically.

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