Paul Morphy the greatest chess player A.K.A god of chess

I think we'd be hard-pressed to find many GM's who give a hard definitive statement as to who they think would be the #1 greatest in theoretical match-ups between the all-time greats. The ones that seem to come up a lot in people's short lists are Morphy, Capablanca, Alekhine, Fischer, and Kasparov.

Steinitz didn't do as well against common opponents with Morphy, and he got destroyed by Lasker. And didn't he also have an overall minus against Tarrasch who was busy being a physician?

Lasker didn't defend his title for long periods of time and got destroyed by Capa.

Capablanca as number 1 can be challenged by his loss to Alekhine.

Alekhine can be challenged by his loss to Euwe and his ducking Capablanca for a rematch.

Botvinnik had nearly even records in WC wins Bronstein, Smyslov, and Tal, and he had the benefit of the Soviet collusions against Reshevsky and Fischer.

Fisher as number 1 can be challenged by his refusal to defend his title.

Kasparov as number 1 can be challenged by his loss to Kramnik, and that he barely eked out victory (though in 3 matches nonetheless, amazingly so) against Karpov, who himself struggled in one of his WC matches against an older Korchnoi.

Morphy, though, has fewer of these direct challenges to his dominance ... People cannot challenge his chess accomplishments directly, they can only challenge the quality of the masters that he hardly tried against. The other thing about the other champions is that, with the exception of maybe Capa, none of them just suddenly burst onto the scene and dominated in such a manner.

I agree that a freshly time-transported unbooked up Morphy may struggle early in an all-time match-up, but genius is genius... Everyone in the mid-19th century had whatever similar resources they had, but Morphy dominated without even the tools those players of the mid-19th century had, namely a stream of the strongest players to play regularly (being in the US instead of Europe). I agree with Bronstein and Fischer, that it wouldn't take much for Morphy to catch up to modern GM's and then I go a step-further to say Morphy would surpass them ... I understand the last part is an opinion, but that is what this whole thread is, arguing over opinions.

I also think it is unfair that these greats are being compared to computers ... The romantics liked to gambit and it was considers unmanly to back down. They could calculate variations as well as modern day GM's. If you destroy your opponents so easily, you don't play your best or most accurate/computer-like. If you are up 5-0 in football (soccer in US), you might decide to rest your star players for the last 20 minutes of the game so they can be refreshed for the World Cup, rather than run up the score to 6 or 7 goals to further prove your team's greatness. Or if your team is already advancing, you might rest your star players in a game that doesn't affect the outcome. It would be unfair for future generations to say "oh they only won 5-1, but the other team 50 years later (who kept their star players in to break a record) beat a more modern better team 6-0, so they are better."

And as far as the advantage of modern knowledge... There are 1800 players who know more about openings, pawn structures, and modern advances than Morphy, but none would come close to beating Morphy. Modern advances are knowledge-based, not logic/computational-based.

Yes—Paul seemed to consider chess a hobby at most—a brief dabbling with the game as a challenge to himself, just to see how well he could do with it.

His true passion (and the majority of his time) was devoted to studying law.

Chess eventually became a source of disdain for him. People kept pressing him about it, despite his obvious desire to no longer be associated with chess, and to pursue other things.

Back then, being a chess player was neither profitable, nor respectable. His reputation of being a world-class player followed him around. Plagued him, even. And he grew to hate it. Much to our loss. :(

 

That may or may not be true, but what has it got to do with Paul Morphy?

 

I agree with you. Morphy exhibited sheer brilliance in his chess playing. And I don't say that as empty hyperbole—I mean his moves truly look like the markings of a player with an abnormally high IQ.

Players with tremendous IQs have a reputation for doing exceptionally well in chess—it would make sense, after all, since chess is a thinking game.

Judit Polgar? IQ of 170. Genius level. Kasparov? IQ of 190. Genius level.

Kasparov himself, in 2003, even described Morphy as a "super-genius." And if any chess player can identify genius in another player, certainly Kasparov can.

Morphy, in my opinion, was more than likely in the genius-level IQ range—which would explain why chess came so easily to him—especially for a person who, according to history, rarely studied chess at all—and why his playing was so far ahead of his time.

In our days, he'd be a strong GM, for sure—outmatched only by those other rare geniuses of our time.

Einstein was not good at chess.

Kasparov's IQ was tested at 135.

Ridiculous websites give celebrities and politicians fake IQs, don't ever believe them.

Chess is different from intelligence and both are different from IQ.

You are both right, general IQ may not correlate with chess strength, but smarter people probably learn it faster much like they might learn any subject. And of course, there are those who have more geometric or mathematical intelligence that may help them with chess-specific type logic/analysis, even if their overall IQ doesn't show it. Kasparov is a low-level genius at 135, but in chess, even Fischer called him more of an idiot-savant (a compliment I would say, even if Fischer meant the opposite). How does that help Morphy? What was Kasparov doing all the time from a very young age that Morphy wasn't? No, but seriously, Kasparov is also great, possibly the greatest of all time one can argue.

Kids can be GMs, so you don't need to be what's commonly thought of as "smart" or "intelligent" (even though these terms aren't well defined). Maybe the kids are very smart kids, but they're still kids. A 10 year old with an IQ of 180 is, by definition, as smart as an 18 year old. This is really impressive at 10! But not impressive for an adult.

Having said that, one of my favorite things to do when analyzing is conceptualize why a move is good, and then try to come up with a general application so I can use this in other positions. I think my intelligence, whatever it is, has helped me improve more than I would have otherwise.

However I think this is a sign I'm near my limit as this sort of progress is very slow. I don't imagine someone who is going straight to GM needs to waste time with logic like this, they just absorb a lot of patterns. They may not know why something works, they just know it looks right.

I believe that most people, of average intelligence or higher, can achieve basic chess mastery—though, for most of us, it requires dilligence, study, absorbing principles and ideas passed down from players smarter than us, and a whole lot of learning through trial and error. Also, like you pointed out, 01: finding thinking techniques that work for us.

By all the accounts I've seen, Morphy seemed to excel without much of any of that. He learned the game through observation, then intuitively grasped out how to play it at a level that surpassed everyone else. No instruction needed. No study or training really required.

For Morphy, chess mastery appeared to come quickly and easily, with seemingly little to no effort on his part. And it wasn't even just reaching a master class—he reached a level of play that was mind-boggling for his time.

It's why I believe he must've been of a gifted intelligence—intuitively understanding the game, while his opponents were struggling against him through the more common approach: careful, conscious effort.

 

Well that makes nonsense of Jonathan Levitt's idea that your maximum attainable FIDE rating = (10 x IQ) + 1000

With all the incredibly high praise from chess legends, from Andersson and Anand, to Fischer, Capa, Lasker, Kasparov, Bronstein, etc. it seems silly to think he wasn't just a total freak of nature, who hardly studied, and hardly spent any time thinking during his moves.
Until a natural comes along with such profound innate ability, he will be forever in a league all by himself.

 

That just is not true.  Historically the idea of a "mental age" in advance of chronical age was important in developing the idea of IQ, and on that view a child of 10 who exhibited a mental age of 18 might have been said to have an IQ of 180.

 

But that sort of reasoning cannot be applied to adults, and leads to some absurdities in children, like the IQ declining as a child matures - even as they become smarter.

Modern IQ test do not work like that.

Modern tests are calibrated so that the mean score is 100 and the standard deviation is 15.

Although high scores in the 180s and 200s are reported in articles on the web and other media the highest score attainable in a properly calibrated IQ test is 155.

Furthermore it seems that an IQ of 125-135 or more is sufficient to be outstanding in just about any endevour.  When you have a high enough IQ  (whatever it might be) then other factors determine who masters a skill and who does not.

"You will have to tell us why you think he was wrong if you expect us to accept your opinion over that of someone that probably knew more about chess than all the contributors to this thread put together"

He was wrong because the best chess players of today are professionals, who have trained hard since childhood, had help from databases and chess engines, spend maybe ten hours a day on chess for decades, have read the classics, been coached by pros for many years, play lots of top tournaments against top opposition every year, know volumes of opening theory to the 20th move and beyond, etc etc. Claiming that players from the 1700s would make up for these disadvantages by watching one tournament and glance through some opening theory is ridiculous regardless who claims it. The differences are simply too big.

 

But Bronstein did not make such a ridiculous claim, and he knew as well asanyone how much chess modern players play, how they ar e coached, and how much preparation they do. His career spanned more than half a century from the mid-1930s to the 1990s and the start of the modern era. He was still very strong at the age of 92 when he won the 1995 Hastings Open swiss event. The only thing he may not have anticipated is the power of chess playing computers and their impact on the game.

I think it is pretty arrogant of you to bluntly pronounce him wrong, and to pretend thet he made foolish claims.  He did not, and he earned the right to have his opinions respected, if not agreed with.

BlunderA lots wrote: Transported to our days, Morphy would've been grateful to finally find some worthy competition.

He was so far ahead of the players of his time, so starved for a challenge, that chess quickly became boring for him. :\

Found another interesting quote, from another notable World Champion:

"Paul Morphy was the greatest chess player that ever lived." — Dr. Emanuel Lasker, 1905, Lasker's Chess Magazine 

Morphy had stiff competition but turn it down, that was Steinitz. Steinitz had a few things going for him, much better openings, better understanding in the middlegame, great defender and a superb endgame technique. So, no, Morphy was not bored because their was no competition, he simply did not want to play chess because mommy said no to chess.

Morphy did study chess, he did a lot analysis on La Bourdonnais vs. Mc Donnell, match 1834 and had a London 1851 tournament book and did analysis, Morphy had low opinion on Staunton's games, he had thought La Bourdonnais played correct chess, piece mobility with center control, he did not like Philidor's games. Morphy emulate La Bourdonnais's style and if you like how Morphy handle his pieces and control of center give thanks to Morphy's hero, La Bourdonnais.

Didn't live to see any of the last six decades.

"Paul Morphy was the greatest chess player that ever lived." — Dr. Emanuel Lasker, 1905, Lasker's Chess Magazine

I couldn't find this quote, or anything remotely similar, anywhere in "Lasker's Magazine."  I did look in "Lasker's Manual of Chess" and found a similar quote but not in the context used here.

Here is the young Paul Morphy, stronger and greater than any master ever was." And the world listened and applauded and cried "Hurrah for Paul Morphy, the King of Chess."  The subject was "The History of Planning in Chess."

The context is that the "chess world" is making this exclamation, not Lasker himself - thought the flowery language is unmistakenly that of Lasker.

The major Steinitz chess activity was in the decades AFTER 1858. The famous Steinitz world championship successes were in 1886 and later (well after the death of Anderssen).

Morphy's major chess activity was in 1857-8. Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, and Kasparov had careers extending for decades, well after 1858.

Nobody is likely to come along and have a notable chess career playing only players of the sort Morphy faced in 1857-8.