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

Yes seeing that wearing trash bags was copyrighted by mc hammer

I never knew "U Can't Touch This" was an actual statement backed up by a legal team!

Backed up by the surgeon general's warning.

"Touching this while pregnant will result in an increased risk of birth defects."

Like the actual delivery of another chess.com member

Now a very instructive example of thread hijacking

The OP was vacuous, and the topic has run its course. Even if the topic were hijacked it wouldn't matter.

Addressing the op seriously would stress any bunny out.

1. Knights Morphy without authority.

2. Claims best player w/o providing evidence

3. Claims always attacks & kept king safe which was false. Counter examples exist.

4. Claims no theory existed at that point. Poor philidor, etc

5. Claims most engines agree on his perfect play. False & why do some not agree? ;-)

6. Doesn't care what unbelievers say. Therefore no discussion tolerated.

This was more like a rescue than a hijack.

There, I've busted a pipe. Happy now?

Morphy's opening play wasn't the most accurate (to be fair, though: neither was anyone else's of those days). Engines and modern theory have come a long way in honing opening play. Today's masters would wipe the floor with the 19th century masters, simply by getting into better positions right out of the gate.

But once things got into the middlegame attack, Morphy was incredibly accurate. Accurate in a way that made Kasparov call him "brilliant" and Anand call him "unbelievable".

Look at his game against Bird, and run it alongside 3200-rated Stockfish.

After Morphy plays his eye-opening rook sacrifice with 17... Rxf2!?—a move that's pretty much famous these days—the rest of the game (the next 12 moves of his) are all 100% Stockfish moves.

This is why even 2785 Bobby Fischer found Morphy's moves challenging to refute—because, once his attack was underway, Morphy really did play like a modern grandmaster. (Or like a modern engine, depending on how you want to look at it.)

The problem with players here is they make assertion without facts, Morphy was not the only player to advocate rapid development and pawn center control, players were doing that already before Morphy. Morphy genius was is incredible gift in tactics and combinations, the time he played he had no equal. Playing through over four hundred games of Morphy, he has two weaknesses, positional and endgame, in one game against Paulsen, Paulsen outplay Morphy positionally. Two years later Paulsen and Anderssen improve dramatically, we have to thank Paulsen for all the theoretical work on the Sicilian,what did Morphy give us concerning the opening theory? FM.Rumo 75 is correct, Morphy is probably 2350, I can safely say Steinitz and Chigorin was about 2400 and Lasker, Tarrasch and Pillsbury were at least 2500 GM level.

So when talking about Morphy's strength, do most informed people believe that the later GM's could beat Morphy in isolated tournament games where they know a more modern specific line and milk their advantage to the bitter end, or do they also include a theoretical match, where Morphy and the opponent would play many games, and he would have time to adjust and force his opponents into lines where they rely on their own resources and run out of time?  Why couldn't he still destroy the rest of the bunch in this scenario, especially from the 19th century?

 An endorsement by Fischer is pretty remarkable.

Tactically, I thought Anderssen was considered equal to Morphy, but not for the rest of the aspects of the game.

Within 5 years of Morphy's death was born Capablanca, and the year after Capa's death was born Fischer. 

my style is actually the same as Pauls style I also wear the same jeans and heavy jackets ya know its easy win if you are well dressed on the board... 

Opening theory would be the smallest of Morphy's problems. Modern grandmasters just understand 100 times more about chess in general. Even if Morphy was as strong as a 2600 player tactically, and that's a big IF, not knowing what to do in many structures and poor endgame skills would put him into a bad position more often than not.

As for the endorsement of a mentally ill person who believed in all kind of crazy bullshit, I think it's of very limited value.

Cyrus Lakdawals in his book Fischer: Move By Move he list the results of an e-mail discussion by a number of GMs and IMs They ranked all the greats in a number of different categories.

For the Category "Strategic understanding and planning it was Morphy, Staunton, and Tarrasch. Carlson finished last, and Karpov was 3rd to last.

For the category "Intuition: it was Morphy, Capa, and Smysolw, Carlsen, was once again last and

For the category Tactical ability and combination all vision it was Anderssen, Morphy, and Alekhine, and Keres, Anand was last, Kasparov was 3rd to last.

For the category Feel for the initiative it was: Morphy, Alekhine,Keres, Karsparov, Anand, and Topalov were the bottom 3.

So according to these GMs and IMs Paul Morphy was either the best or second best in 5 of the 11 categories they looked at.

My question who of the active top players could beat Paul if they were stripped of all their modern knowledge and tools and sent back to the mid 1800 to play. If they only had access to the same tools and knowledge as Paul would they even be a top player.

"To this day Morphy is an unsurpassed master of the open games. Just how great his significance was is evident from the fact that after Morpy nothing substantially new has been greated in this Field" Botvinnik.

"Many people consider Morphy to be the greatest combinative player of all time. But Morphy owed his remarkable achievements not only to his admittedly tremendous combinative talents, but also to the fact that he was the first perfect positional player- is so far as one can speak of perfection in a human being. Euwe

These rankings are so beyond ridiculous, it's obvious that they are not results from an "email discussion by GMs and IMs". Carlsen last in intuition? Karpov 3rd to last in strategic understanding and planning? Kasparov at the bottom regarding feel for the initiative?? I know that people want to sell books, but do they really have to fill it with such a load of total bullcrap?

@ H_ Staunton, really? How games of Morphy did you go through? I went over four hundred games of Morphy, he at best might be 2400 elo. He blunders, made poor positional moves, misplay on the white side of sicilian and allow a very weak player to draw, he attack when his pieces were undeveloped on queenside, he broke opening principles develop bishop before knight, his understanding in less than perfect. Morphy lost to Loewenthal in a king and pawn endgame, where any low 2000 elo would of easily draw. Anderssen advance in his chess knowledge because he played the best players after Morphy's match, Paulsen did his opening research and innovation on the Sicilian defense and many opening and was one first players to advocate defense in his games, this before Stein itz; what work of opening did Morphy do? Or what set of positional principles did Morphy advocate? Morphy contribute to the open game, but so did other masters like Anderssen, (Kolisch, Blackburne, Zukertort, Mackenzie, Suhle, Hirschfeld and Chigorin, these masters were great attacker not only contribute to the open game but also to positional play,endgame and opening.), so Botvinnik comment is laughable.

Steinitz would of beat Morphy, because he had better openings, superior positional understanding, defensive skills and great endgame, something Morphy lack. Steinitz prove defensive skills was an important skill to possess, he beat a much better player than Morphy and that was Zukertort.

yureesystem wrote:

Steinitz would of beat Morphy, because he had better openings, superior positional understanding, defensive skills and great endgame, something Morphy lack. Steinitz prove defensive skills was an important skill to possess, he beat a much better player than Morphy and that was Zukertort.

Steinitz would have dragged out a win, but chess would have suffered. Steinitz was not a crowd pleaser.

'To all,

The list I referenced above can be reviewed by anyone by going to Amazon and viewing the free sample of Fischer: Move by Move. The fact that different FMs, GM, and IMs have different assessments of Paul Morphy is no surprise. However, the fact remains that of number of them considered Paul Morphy worthy of being considered when discussing who was / is the greates player of all time.

Also one world champion consider Morphy the greatest open game player of all time.

I will ask my question again: Who of the active top players if they were born during the 1800 and only had access to the same knowledge and tools as Paul could of beat him in the open game?

IMO, Morphy would be a terror to face for most of today's masters, had they been born in his era.

Most players don't reach 2200+ without a lot of effort, practice, and study. A lot of losing, learning, and rising through the ranks. These days, it's done it with the help of modern theory, instructional books, and engines, too.

As far as history (or perhaps legend) has it, Morphy didn't need any of that. He would probably have considered such devotion to chess a huge waste of time, even.

For him, it was seemingly simple: just glance at the board and play strong chess.

Who needs engines or books, or databases to review, when you can simply play masterful chess through intuition alone? :P