Thanks, Batgirl!
It's amusing to read all the Morphy threads here that ignore Lasker's main point that Morphy worked hard to apply logic to chess. Instead, many of Morphy's most vocal supporters here argue that he was a pure genius.
Lasker makes some excellent points in this lecture.
Btw, generations before Morphy, Philidor laid the groundwork for positional chess with his focus on the power of pawns and pawn structures.
Interesting, thanks for posting this. I have a copy of Lasker's book 'Common Sense in Chess', which according to the preface, was 'an abstract of Twelve Lectures given before an audience of London chess players during the spring of 1895'. The content is very similar in vein to the article from 1907.
The highly original English chess player, Wadsworth Donisthorpe (see: https://www.chess.com/article/view/wordsworth ) was a pioneer in moving pictures. He invented an apparatus called the Kinesigraph (see: http://www.victorian-cinema.net/donisthorpe ) in 1876 designed to facilitate the taking of successive photos. In 1890, he made a moving picture of Tralfagar Square (can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRLnOiTVTFg ).
Nevertheless, Your right this is all a great read.
ty batgirl for finding it.
Posting in hopes that this kind of thread can actually stay on the front page for a while...
Not when it's followed by 'am I Morphy reborn?' or 'count till Morphy posts' or 'the last one to post is morphy'
Point out all these many typos.
Copy and pasted line (explanation)
---
lie demonstrated. but the (period)
to Dr. Lasker. was due (period)
and powers or intuition (of)
and the same might he said of (be)
Prior to Morphy's time it was the fashion to believe chess masters gifted with a mysterious power. (chess masters were gifted)
to take Infinite pains (capitalized infinite)
This, said Dr. Lasker. is a false I Idea. (period and "I Idea")
his combinations. and the (period)
own play. but on (period)
which he lived. for it was (period)
in fine, a logical sense. (maybe this is not a typo, maybe an old way of saying "in short, a logical sense")
He must hare formulated (have)
no matter bow subtle the (how)
of his opponent. he must be victorious (peroid)
be victorious it he does his (if)
chess world , and give (space)
Get a grip you knife wielding fiendish grammar prigs, my goodness did a few typos really spoil your enjoyment of the article, clearly your pedantry knows no bounds.
It's another great Batgirl contribution. I don't care about a few typos.
But since she asked, I went ahead and read it like that.
You've got a lot of time on your hands.
Thanks for the topic though.
D
Get a grip you knife wielding fiendish grammar prigs, my goodness did a few typos really spoil your enjoyment of the article, clearly your pedantry knows no bounds.
It's another great Batgirl contribution. I don't care about a few typos.
But since she asked, I went ahead and read it like that.
I understand. I was being a little tongue-in-cheek by saying you must have a lot of time on your hands as the following will show - about how I spend my own time.
Let me reveal my thought process and steps in this particular posting.
I've had this particular newspaper page in pdf form for a long time, maybe 15 years. I came across it looking for something else and smiled. I thought it would make an interesting read for those who like this sort of thing. I can't post a pdf, so I thought I'm make it into an image. But there's a problem. The newspaper article in in columns and by reducing it to make it fit here, it would be very tiny print. So in an attepmt to resolve that issue, I snipped the columns and made it into one long column, but then found another problem. The print in the image, at best, is only barely readable and there are ink blotches all over article; additionally, the image size is huge and optimizing it reduced the readability even more. So, for the reasons of readability and size, but also because text is more versatile as it can be copies and pasted as well as translated using Google, I decided to make a text of the image.
In spite of the fact that I type a lot, I'm a lousy typist. To avoid typing, I ran the image through an online OCR which gave me instant text, but 20% was totally garbled. Using the pdf as a guide, I painstakingly ungarbled the text and ran it through a spell check. Knowing a spell check doesn't necessarily catch things like "cow" when it should be "how" or misplaced punctuation, I read though it as carefully as my tired eyes allowed. Being this is a forum posting and not an article, my standards were lower, but I still wanted something presentable. After spending 2.5-3 hours, I just wanted to finish. Having finished to my satisfaction after having invested a considerable amount of free time, not even counting the time spend when had I originally found the article, the very first comment, apparently by someone who has never spent more than a few minutes on any one posting and who never created an informative thread here, read, "What a shame here are so many typos! A little more care would have paid dividends. "
I wasn't so much curious about what the said typos might be as I was in learning just how deplorable they were.
Ouch!
Get a grip you knife wielding fiendish grammar prigs, my goodness did a few typos really spoil your enjoyment of the article, clearly your pedantry knows no bounds.
It's another great Batgirl contribution. I don't care about a few typos.
But since she asked, I went ahead and read it like that.
I understand. I was being a little tongue-in-cheek by saying you must have a lot of time on your hands as the following will show - about how I spend my own time.
Let me reveal my thought process and steps in this particular posting.
I've had this particular newspaper page in pdf form for a long time, maybe 15 years. I came across it looking for something else and smiled. I thought it would make an interesting read for those who like this sort of thing. I can't post a pdf, so I thought I'm make it into an image. But there's a problem. The newspaper article in in columns and by reducing it to make it fit here, it would be very tiny print. So in an attepmt to resolve that issue, I snipped the columns and made it into one long column, but then found another problem. The print in the image, at best, is only barely readable and there are ink blotches all over article; additionally, the image size is huge and optimizing it reduced the readability even more. So, for the reasons of readability and size, but also because text is more versatile as it can be copies and pasted as well as translated using Google, I decided to make a text of the image.
In spite of the fact that I type a lot, I'm a lousy typist. To avoid typing, I ran the image through an online OCR which gave me instant text, but 20% was totally garbled. Using the pdf as a guide, I painstakingly ungarbled the text and ran it through a spell check. Knowing a spell check doesn't necessarily catch things like "cow" when it should be "how" or misplaced punctuation, I read though it as carefully as my tired eyes allowed. Being this is a forum posting and not an article, my standards were lower, but I still wanted something presentable. After spending 2.5-3 hours, I just wanted to finish. Having finished to my satisfaction after having invested a considerable amount of free time, not even counting the time spend when had I originally found the article, the very first comment, apparently by someone who has never spent more than a few minutes on any one posting and who never created an informative thread here, read, "What a shame here are so many typos! A little more care would have paid dividends. "
I wasn't so much curious about what the said typos might be as I was in learning just how deplorable they were.
I imagined it was at least an hour of work, but I didn't imagine 2.5-3 hours. Thanks again for the effort.
It's interesting not only because it's Lasker talking about Morphy's ability and approach to the game as Laskers see it, it also has historical significance, showing a shift in attitude from what we might call the romantic era to the modern one. Not only do we see how masters were regarded (attacks were irresistible as long as you were imaginative enough) but also learn when it was this attitude was changing, all as told by a world champion.
The whole:
"no combinations however skillful could resist the inexorable force of superior effort.
'It is the same in life as on the chess board.'
wasn't as interesting me, but I guess that's a good point too.
Ironically Lasker is one of most Romantic of chess writers but not the least Romantic in his chess style.
Reading Lasker's take on Morphy, I get the impression that the difference between Anderssen and Morphy, and why Morphy beat him so decisively, in Lasker's view, was that Morphy always tried to put his pieces on their best square as the position dictated and his combinative powers and superior technique eventually exposed his opponent's weaknesses, allowing him to display either of those abilities. But Anderssen first looked for the pretty combination and after imagining it, tried to steer the game towards it - and if was deep enough or if his opponent was weak enough, he succeeded. Morphy could see though this, overwhelmed neither by Anderssen's schemes or technique (some thing Anderssen himself allluded to: "He who plays with Morphy must not only renounce every hope of concealing even the subtlest traps, but he must also start with the idea that Morphy will clearly see through all, and there can be no question of a misstep." - see Anderssen's letter to v.d.Lasa)
Get a grip you knife wielding fiendish grammar prigs, my goodness did a few typos really spoil your enjoyment of the article, clearly your pedantry knows no bounds.