Steinitz vs Morphy

belente, prove to me you are in my league and do some tactics in tactical trainer or shut up, fool!! If you think online chess is so easy, lets see if you can get to 1900 playing 1900 opponents, fool. Any duffer can have a big mouth but back it up with action. I did not criticize Morphy, I compare him to Steinitz, you idiot. You can even tell me why Morphy is better than Steinitz, instead of all this name calling.

 Tell be why you are not doing your tactics in tactically trainer, are you afraid you will score low, duffer!!

You are dense and you contribute nothing to this post: just stop being idiot and shut up!!

These last few posts are funnier if you imagine they are Morphy and Steinitz arguing with each other.

I am going to say that Morphy was far ahead of Stientz, we never got to see this for a few reasons.

Morphy defeated all the great masters (excluding staunton, but that is a different story) very quickly, and very outrageously. second and more importantly he had a better record against their common opponents, knowing how people work, this means that Morphy was a much better player than Steintz. People don't learn from being thrashed and then not having a postmortem, back then chess was considered an artform, and not a science. the old gaurd never changed this to the otherway around. Stientz with his scientific methods couldn't defeat the artful romantics the same way Morphy could. Psycologically speaking Morphy was eons ahead of Stientz, and play wise, I suspect Morphy could have handled Lasker for a short bit. was Morphy's endgame and positional play weaker than his tactics, yes I won't deny it, but that doesn't matter when your opponent allows you to build an attack by move 15

Jetfighter13, you made some good points. Morphy  when it comes to tactics,  he was brilliant. Playing through his game I was astonish how quickly he recognize some tactical possibility in a position. His play is truly beautiful but his positional and endgame technique were not in the same caliber the like of Steinitz. Defensive technique were being develop and Paulsen believe that in given position one could defend a bad position; Steinitz add to it. Who knows if Morphy would evolve and progress and became stronger in positional play and the endgame. Morphy had the opportunity to play two very strong master, Kolisch and a much improve Paulsen;if  Morphy would of beat these two masters, I say he would of beat Steinitz. Paulsen was growing stronger and attacking better and his opening were better and evolving; we can only look at his Sicilian defense how much he perfected it at his time.

a close match. With white, Steinitz would probably outplay Morphy in a d3-c3 ruy lopez (with the h3-g4 plan, which was a "slow" attack back then), but Steinitz believed that taking pawns was good, so he would get crushed when playing black against the kings gambit and the evans gambit

ViktorHielsen, I agree with you, the way Steinitz handle the Ruy Lopez was better than Morphy and his queen's opening was even more dangerous; Chigorin complain that it was hard to meet and acknowledge Steinitz queen's opening was difficult to play against. Can imagine Morphy trying figure out what to play against 1.d4, no!, the Dutch defense is not good enough against a strong positional player like Steinitz.

yureesystem,

I may have also forgot to mention that there is a slight American mentality, once Americans win at something we tend to loose intrest quickly, Morphy ripped the chess world a new one and the next Native Born American to do well was Bobby Fischer. In the Olympics we dominated for a long while. we still do, but not at the level we used to. It shows itself. even in the World Wars we didn't want to fight them. we did because the other nations involved us. Once Americans beat the rest of the world at something we stop because we are the greatest so why bother.

Jetfighter13, I agree to a point, some Americans seem to lose interest once they won but we lost our competitive edge and once we strive for first place and now we are satisfy with second or third place. I believe with Morphy it was his mother love; his mother made him quit chess because it was not becoming of a gentleman. We should be glad the games we have of Morphy, we can enjoy and learn from.

 I like what you wrote, you are thinker not a follower.

well he also wanted to become a lawyer and there was trouble at home in regards to politics, but maybe we remember his career because it was so short and bright.

It would've been an interesting match that produced some memorable games that we'd study today.  It's a shame it never happened.  I think Steinitz would've won by a small margin.  He defends well enough in games to get some key wins/draws and is able to win late middlegames/endgames of his own against Morphy.

Morphy proved to be able to beat all strongest players of his time, so.. why not the same with Steinitz?

Two reasons:

A) Steinitz learned from Morphy's games

B) Steinitz was definitely better than any of Morphy's opponents. 

In fact, Steinitz was objectively better than Morphy according to analysis done by the statistician Kenneth Regan. 

When did Steinitz learn from Morphy's games, during Morphy's active chess career or in last period of Morphy's life (or after his death)? Because this makes a big difference, as if we could travel through time and get a Fischer-Morphy match after Fischer having studied Morphy..
Anyway, maybe Steinitz was more tactician than Morphy, but more probably not bright like him. Maybe he would have won some games against Morphy but not a whole match, just like during Harrwitz-Morphy match, where Morphy took the measures to definitively defeat him in following games..

Steinitz, is better positional player with better endgame technique, and also he understand securing the center and pawn chain, judging from his Steinitz defense against Ruy Lopez. Steinitz would beat Morphy in the queen's pawn opening, Morphy understand in queen's opening was poor. Steinitz played the Ruy Lopez better than Morphy.

Even if so, Morphy probably would learn soon against Steinitz in a series of games.. we cannot be sure about whom would have been winning in long term. This will remain an unsolved case. My favorable opinion inclines to Morphy.

So, your argument isn't that Morphy was demonstrably better than Steinitz, but that he had the ability to improve and play better against Steinitz than he ever played against anyone else.

I think yureesystem's point is that the actual games that were played show that Steinitz was better at his best than Morphy at his best. That is measurable, and demonstrably true. Your argument is speculative and impossible to prove one way or the other.

Morphy attacking...sac..sac..sac...Steinitz defending and simplyfying ...swish..swish...swish...Morphy holds Steinitz hands.."Come on dude lets take a walk under the sun". :)

Changed my mind with some more thinking on it, and I'm going with Steinitz. Steinitz had a willingness to learn and he improved his game a lot over the years and I doubt Morphy would have had the ability to beat Steinitz in a match, a close one at that.

SmyslovFan, on what can this be demonstrable with certainty? Basing on games played against other players? Or just on Kenneth Regan's analysis? As you said, Steinitz learned from Morphy... why wouldn't have been possible the opposite?

I believe that human progress can actually be a regress. I think over the course of a reasonable match length (first to 12.5 points) I think that Morphy would win. would it be by Morphy's usual gigantic margin, no. the match would be within at least 1.5 points, probably closer. Morphy would quickly learn how to deal with Stientz play. Morphy was known for quick learning, he also had tremendous talent and contrary to popular belief he was not another 1850's sac everything in a crazy attack to win. His attacks came from the position. He fluidly developed all of his pieces, then used all of them in a cohesive maner to eliminate his opponents Monarch.