Wow, this game is actually pretty amazing! This guy is a checkmate machine!
Opera Game - Big Deal?
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He plays with great simplicity and it's a great example of purposeful development, but yes ultimately I don't think it's a great game. His opponents played too poorly.
The point is its instructiveness.
Thank you for the replies. Wikipedia seems to agree that it is famous because of it's instructive value. I just find it amazing that a game can become famous for that reason alone.
pfren - Yes I actually believe Nc3 is a better practical choice than the Bxf7+ which I am sure I would have played without much thought, that is the one redeeming feature of this game. That one move is instructive for me, even if the computer likes my move more, I don't. I wasn't surprised at the poor play by Black, I just expected that Morphy would have had to find some trickier way of exploiting it than just playing really obvious moves.
I want to start off by saying that I believe Morphy to be a fantastic talent and this thread is no way a dig at his play in this game.
Yesterday I saw the famous Opera Game for the first time. I was expecting to see wild sacrifices and very complicated play. I saw none of that, in fact, I couldn't distinguish this game from any other Morphy games that I have seen. Morphy plays strong, simple, aggressive moves and his opponent(s) play terribly. A short, flashy but ultimately empty game.
I have seen this game once (and I have a terrible memory) and yet I didn't even have to check what the moves were. I just had to remember the moves Qe7, c6 and Qe6. The rest of Black's moves were simply the obvious move that a complete beginner would make and every one of White's moves is just the move that I would make (with possible exceptions on moves 2 and 8) - even in a blitz game.
Can somebody please explain to me what is special about this game? It just looks like every Morphy game except that he is only playing one simultaneous game, he can see the board and he starts with all of his pieces...