Paul Morphy's Rating>2638

I am a big fan of the past masters, it was their creativity, originality of ideas and because of them we can play chess properly. Here is a game from Steinitz and Anderssen match 1966, a strong FIDE master comment on this game and he was completely wrong, he did not understand the middlegame planning and the attack was beyond his ability. It show that given Anderssen a chance to play against the current masters, they will be own by these past chess genius. Morphy would have no problems beating FIDE master, and I can safely say the same for Kolisch, Paulsen, Steinitz, Blackburne, Pillsbury, Tarrasch, Zukertort, and other great past masters.  

 If Fide master lack knowledge in such a game and could not form a correct plan, a Anderssen, Morphy, Steinitz and Blackburne and other past masters will crush these modern master. Opening mean nothing to a chess genius abilities. Many rated Anderssen a mere 2000 to 2100 elo, I NEVER seen a expert play in such high caliber, this attack  is grandmaster level and Anderssen planning is very original. Players can have an opinion without facts and I bet they never played over any of the great past masters games, just blah, blah and more blah. 

 Morphy might have its weaknesses but he had incredible ability to understand a position, his calculation and imagination was unequal to any modern masters; to suggest that Morphy beat just patzers is to  undermine his accomplishments. If you look at Paulsen, Bird and Anderssen games after 1860s, they improve tremendously and they contribute to opening, just Paulsen alone help develop the Sicilian defense and other opening and defenses. 

 All those doubters, IMs and GMs making one move blunders, very rare in a past master; their calculation was nearly perfect.   

 I have no doubt that Morphy will give a few lesson to this IM. 

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

First of all, anyone who knows anything about chess knows that a blunder is one move.

Does it spoil the rest of the game?

And the attack was nowhere near GM level.

I have better combinations than that!

Simply 16... Kxg7 17. Nh5+ Kg8 18. Qh6, 1-0, or 16... Re8 17. Qh6 followed by Ng5.

So why don't you explain why the planning is correct?

Of course Morphy has a 2600+ elo equivalent to that of a modern chess grandmaster.

let's remember that Morphy lived not so long ago (1837-1884) and lived well after his chess career was over. He defeated Anderssen in 1858 (+7=2-2). Was Anderssen 2300 elo ? I think that Anderssen was far stronger than a modern 2300 elo player.

In 1870, Anderssen won the strong Baden Baden tournament while Steinitz came second. Steinitz was 34 and later become officially world champion from 1886 to 1894. He became world champion only two years after Morphy's death. Some considered Steinitz to be the unofficial world champion when he defeated Anderssen in a match in 1866. Steinitz was born in 1836 and died in 1900. Anderssen was born in 1818 and died in 1879.

By setting this historical perspective, I want to show that if Morphy had kept on playing chess, he could have played against Steinitz.

I found that link posted by batgirl in which William Henry Bird who had played against both players (Morphy and Steinitz) talk about them: http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/BirdTalk.html

Bird says that he did well against Steinitz while he was crushed by Morphy. Let's quote him :

"I trotted Steinitz the closest heat he ever contested. He beat me 8 to 7, with 6 draws. This was in '67. In '58 Morphy beat me 10 to 1, with 1 draw. Steinitz claims that he is a better player than ever Morphy was, but I think my record with each is a fair test of the strength of the two. Steinitz claims that when I played with Morphy I was out of practice, but I cannot explain away my crushing defeat by that great player in any such way. I never played better chess in my life than when he beat me. Morphy had more science than Steinitz - more imagination. His career was very short, though very brilliant, and, whether or not he could have held first honors as long as Steinitz, is a matter of some doubt; but Morphy never met his match. He [Morphy] was never compelled to play his best game. His resources were never fully tested."

So unless we consider Steinitz, a world champion, to be a 2300 elo player, It's seems clear to me that Morphy is a 2600+ elo player.

In another link provided by batgirl (Steinitz meeting Morphy http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Steinitz_on_Morphy.html), Steinitz talks about the match vs Anderssen :

"Who gave you the hardest fight that you have ever had?"

"Anderssen in 1866 in London. That was the first of my victories, and, I think, the hardest."

It's the same Anderssen that Morphy had easily defeated only a few years ago.

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Copyright infringment or censorship ? The image was from a magazine published in the 1964 in which Fischer wrote an article about his ten favorite players. I don't really understand where the copyright infringment stems from.

The quote from Fischer has also be erased. Is there a copy infringment on what he said ? 

panafrican

who wins between Morphy and Steinitz?

Long thread.. I don't think anyone can guess his rating but if Fischer himself looked up to him having a 2785 ELO and +125 more than Spassky who was previously the wold champion (considering it would be very difficult to get to 2800+ since most were 2600 and 2500 unlike now) then I'd say he could be as good as any of the top players today.

The problem is he never had a real challenge so we can't know how far he could have pushed himself.

One thing's for sure, without having people to look up to or theory, it's a lot more difficult to get better and he seemd to play a whole lot better than the people from his time. Anyone can re-invent the wheel. 

That is a big issue in discussions like these when someone dominates the competition so easily ... they are judged by games where they do not have to play the most precise moves, so people overestimate his lack of precision and use it as a gauge of his strength more so than the degree to which he dominate the next best players.  Don't stronger players often play dubious lines against players rated a few hundred points lower?    

Lawson's Morphy biography indicated that Morphy acquired a few chess books in 1853. Lawson included a report of a Maurian quote:

"... During the two years that we remained at college together, Morphy played a considerable number of games with me at odds gradually diminishing as I improved. ... Mr. Morphy had the following Chess books with him, the only ones, as far as I know that he ever possessed until the New York Chess Congress in 1857. Horwitz and Kling's Chess Studies, which he pronounced a very good and useful book for students, although not free from error; the B. Vols composing the collection of Kieseritzky's La Regence, and Staunton's Chess Tournament. ..."

"... Morphy became to millions ... the greatest chess master of all time. But if we examine Morphy's record and games critically, we cannot justify such extravaganza. And we are compelled to speak of it as the Morphy myth. ... [Of the 55 tournament and match games, few] can by any stretch be called brilliant. ... He could combine as well as anybody, but he also knew under what circumstances combinations were possible - and in that respect he was twenty years ahead of his time. ... [Morphy's] real abilities were hardly able to be tested. ... We do not see sustained masterpieces; rather flashes of genius. The titanic struggles of the kind we see today [Morphy] could not produce because he lacked the opposition. ... Anderssen could attack brilliantly but had an inadequate understanding of its positional basis. Morphy knew not only how to attack but also when - and that is why he won. ... Even if the myth has been destroyed, Morphy remains one of the giants of chess history. ..." - GM Reuben Fine

It is perhaps worthwhile to keep in mind that, in 1858, the chess world was so amazingly primitive that players still thought tournaments were a pretty neat idea.

yeah...I don't think so

I do believe that, if Morphy had been transported to our time and spent a large part of his career there, he could have been a world class player. His natural talent appears truly exceptional.

Me neither, current challenger Karjakin has never been close to 2800, and he was GM at 12 and was training very hard for many years before and after that, with help of GMs, computers, international tournaments, etc. If Morphy could do much better than him after 6 months it would imply that the chess level has decreased enormously over the last centuries.

six months is far-fetched, of course, but if he returned to life as a 10-year-old boy, after two years of work he could beat almost every grandmaster, many people along this discussion forget Morphy was not a regular man, he was just a genius.

Gracias mecuelgalapieza, nos has cagado la vida a todos haciendole bump a esta thread, saludos.

Lol.

Talvez tengas rason en eso.

De todos modos se me hace tonto que el OP diga que morphy tiene 2638, a lo maximo tenia 2200 y estoy siendo muy generoso.

The argument in favor of Morphy is simply that with the equal playing field of other masters in his time, he dominated to such degree that he had to have some sort of mental gift beyond just slightly more optimal training, hours, instruction, and experience (in fact, he had far less).  Nowadays, we say Carlsen is the champ, but no-one would be too surprised if say Karjakin or Caruana managed an upset.  Slightly surprising, fine, but an earth-shattering upset for the youngest GM in history to up-end the third-youngest (and they are similar in age)?  I thought I had read once that the best result by any opponent against Morphy was losing 70% of the time. Elo ratings have a 200 point difference in playing strength between players correlating with a 75% win rate for the higher-rated player.  Imagine if Magnus were rated 3010 and everyone else were where they were... there would be no question who the greatest ever was.  

"... Morphy became to millions ... the greatest chess master of all time. But if we examine Morphy's record and games critically, we cannot justify such extravaganza. And we are compelled to speak of it as the Morphy myth. ... [Of the 55 tournament and match games, few] can by any stretch be called brilliant. ... He could combine as well as anybody, but he also knew under what circumstances combinations were possible - and in that respect he was twenty years ahead of his time. ... [Morphy's] real abilities were hardly able to be tested. ... We do not see sustained masterpieces; rather flashes of genius. The titanic struggles of the kind we see today [Morphy] could not produce because he lacked the opposition. ... Anderssen could attack brilliantly but had an inadequate understanding of its positional basis. Morphy knew not only how to attack but also when - and that is why he won. ... Even if the myth has been destroyed, Morphy remains one of the giants of chess history. ..." - GM Reuben Fine