Paul Morphy's Rating>2638

Rating is frequently taken as referring to how one would do against modern players. We are not in a position to measure that for Morphy by any verifiable method. Some people want to write about what would happen if Morphy were brought back from the past and (with spectacular unfairness) forced to play with no preparation and forced to forget what he learned from each game. Others prefer to write about how a resurrected Morphy would do with preparation and learning allowed. You can tell that last group to stop if you want, but why should they obey you?

a rating of 2638 means that morphy has a small but not insignificant chance of drawing even the likes of carlsen. i dont see morphy drawing carlsen  or kasparov. too many gaps. think about it. he is outplayed in the opening because of modern theory, he is outplayed in the endgame because lets admit it, endgame theory in the 1850's was in its infancy. that leaves middlegame. can morphy tactics alone be enough to to otherwise balance out the discrepancies in opening and endgame reliably vs 2600 GM opposition,? i dont think so.

2700 today would run circles around him.  his strength is prob closer to very strong aggressive IM's who make up slight positional inaccuracies with incredible tactical acumen. , BUt such glaring inadequacies in so many other aspects of his game would put a hard rating ceiling on him. 

I think that some people are thinking in terms of what would happen if Morphy were given a fair opportunity to prepare and learn from modern games.

well in that case, who knows. talent in chess is a strange thing. he would almost 100% surely be GM calibre but where would he rank? i remember when the likes of waitzkin and robson where talked about as the next Americans to challenge for the world title in the future. Waitzkin quit before reaching GM and robson while very strong, never quite reached top 10 level strength.

other incredible abilities like reti playing 29 games simultaneously while blind would make you think he should have been world champion, but he qas never THAT good  despite being a top player. chess ability OTB at world champion level or even at the strong GM level is a strange conglomerate of abilities.

another good one to ask that would have been sultan khan mir, that amazing indian talent that took the world by storm and disappeared into obscurity.

Smyslovfan, you really can't compare to Morphy brilliant sacrifice to FM Savage, its a nice game but not in the caliber of Morphy. 

A Fide Master is strong but it can't be compare to GM, Morphy play GM level;  Morphy crush Harrwitz elegance combination. GM Ben Finegold refute this silly assertion that Morphy is only 2300 elo. I suggest Smyslovfan watch his videos to learn something from a GM, not a WGM or IM.  

 Morphy pawn sacrifice 30.c5 is dead accurate without it the sacrifice doesn't work, most 2300 would miss this. 

W: Morphy vs. B: Harrwitz ; Match 1858; Philidor defense: Exchange Variation

Black resign its completely hopeless.

NM darkunorthodox88 wrote: "... talent in chess is a strange thing. ..."

"... It is all too frequent that a wrong evaluation is made of what a talented player can achieve. ..." - Luther's Chess Reformation by GM Thomas Luther (2016)

dont judge morphy on his brilliancies. half the time he was giving these players, pawn and move odds. judge morphy on the quality of his mistakes. i concur that a FM on a good day can play a perfect game vs a weaker opposition. this is why judging morphy merely on his "Dazzling" combinations is misleading.

have you ever been asked "tell me how strong i play?" based on a small number of games and its really hard to tell? same with judging morphy on his elegant wins. 

Revolutionary yes, but that is his academic achievement more than his playing achievements (which are still great and underrated... I have no doubts of Steinitz' genius). In other words, if Morphy put into publication his playing "style", would he be considered stronger than he actually was?  Publication is independent of playing strength.

Anybody's ideas may help improve their own play... it is irrelevant whether they are published in writing and irrelevant to the argument.  Nimzo and Reti maintained their top-but-not-best status independent of what they published, just as Steinitz and Morphy maintained their top-dog status independent of publication or lack thereof.

That's why we make the case for it based on circumstantial evidence ... we can always play agnostic on this, true, but then there is no point to the discussion.  They were the same age.  This is not the case of an elderly champ fading and a new brash young punk coming to the fore, and old school is upset about new school, etc.  These are guys who were the same age and who played several of the same opponents, but one of them clearly peaked at a much later time.  Perhaps we need to look at common opponents, but those who played Steinitz' at his peak? 

True, this thread is not about his greatness, and yes of course he and Steinitz are great.  But folks try to use proposed ratings to deny Morphy's skill level (were the players that weak, or was he that strong?) ...

1) When a player is that dominant over everybody else, it is conceivable that he might not play the computer-best moves, hence limiting analysis of his move-quality.

2) When a player is that dominant over everybody else, his comparative rating can only be so much higher. 

3) Then there are the nuances of match versus tournament play in this type of discussion.  I don't doubt that Morphy would get beat badly early on in round-robin type tournaments due to advancements in theory and strategic understanding that he lack, but what if Morphy played folks in long matches?  

A lot of arguments against Morphy's skill level (2638 vs 2350 or what have you) sound like the comparison of a modern day physicist who simply has more scientific knowledge than a past genius such as Isaac Newton, so folks can't seem to grasp that Morphy might really have been that good, yes capable of drawing Magnus Carlsen some of the time (perhaps not at first).

Karjakin was 12 when he became a GM... is that because he is the greatest chess genius ever (finally, this person objectively exists!) or because training and knowledge has improved over the many past decades?  

You do see, don't you, that by arguing he could have been stronger than he was, and would have had to improve his game to defeat the later champions, that you are tacitly agreeing that he wasn't as strong as later champions.

I do not disrespect Morphy. But many show disrespect for the great players who came later by suggesting they didn't learn from Morphy. 

people love the hero worship. i dont see anyone worshipping philidor or staunton around here though. its usually the same drone of morphy and fischer fans all the time. 

There are some people here asking legitimate questions and not engaging in hero worship, as well as the standard worshipers and the bashers.  Aside from all the other points made, also remember that Morphy never played under what we would call tournament conditions.  Clocks, scoresheets, round-robins--these were unknown in Morphy's day.  So the style you have is geared toward brilliancy; those were the only games published, not the games that "merely" (to use the old phrase) garner the point.  Carlsen, Karpov, Petrosian, they would have few games published under those conditions.  These guys aren't looking to barnacle down on the position, they were trying to mix it up as much as possible, win big, get in the paper, the only notoriety of the day.  So to hold any of the mid-19th century players to post 20th century standards is silly.  It might be the same board and pieces but it's not the same game.  And by saying Morphy could have been stronger says nothing about later players, it's saying Morphy could have been stronger compared to where he was, no more, no less.  If everyone is happy with the estimate of 2400 for PM, fine.  He got that without effort, without work--and with retiring at 14.  He came out of retirement at 20 to play for a few years, then retired again.  How far could he have gone had there been anyone strong enough, creative enough to keep him interested?  That's the question that can never be answered.

Dashkee says many things I agree with. 

Regarding Steinitz, he faced the "Polish Morphy", Johannes Zukertort. Zukertort played some incredibly beautiful chess. I believe Zukertort was very similar both in style and skill to Morphy. He is mostly forgotten by the current chess.com crowd in part because he never won the World Championship. If you question Zukertort's strength, take a look at his performance at the London 1883 tournament. He was capable of playing some beautiful combinations, just like Morphy. 

Zukertort didn't win the World Championship because he ran into Steinitz. 

Here's one of the more famous games from that match. The commentary, provided by Fischer, was published at chess games.com:

Btw, Chessmetrics rates Zukertort at 2785 and Steinitz at 2794 in the 1880s. As great as these guys were, they weren't that good. 

Did Steinitz only publish?

"... Generally considered to be the world's strongest player from around 1870 to the early 1890s, Steinitz was by far that era's most profound thinker. He approached chess in the main strategically, revolutionizing our understanding of position and approach to planning, ..." - IM Craig Pritchett (2011)

Is it a good idea to argue in favor of a position in order to have a discussion?

At the time of the major successes of Steinitz, the chess playing population was very different from that faced by Morphy in 1857-8.