Steinitz vs Morphy

jetfighter13, as rdecredico said: just "idiotic fantasy wanks"... Luckily, there are people as smart as him lol

another point I like to bring up is that you can't reach the endgame if you don't survive the middle, give morphy even the hint of a winning position and he will attack. give him an active position and he will attack. Morphy knew how to use what the position gave him and his opponents almost never made it past the middle game, I suspect Stientz would run into a similar problem at first.

Guess there's no point in having tournaments or matches then since we can just predict who would win and declare him a winner.

on the internet. (but don't tell morphy anything about anything)

Steinitz and Zukertort match, Zukertort try to attack and Steinitz defend all threats and pocket a pawn and won in the endgame. And there were time Steinitz completely outplay Zukertort in positional play and won. This what would happen to Morphy, Paul will gambit a pawn and Steinitz would defend and win in the endgame or will outplay Morphy in positional play and win. Steinitz also played a tougher opponent, Chigorin and you see what happen, Steinitz won another attacker, Chigorin. Chigorin was a better endgame player than Morphy; and Steinitz beat Chigorin twice in match.

Steinitz and Lasker mention some of Morphy faults and deficiency in his skills, they pointed to unsound combination, poor understanding of positional play and poor endgame technique. Look at Lasker's Manuel, he mention this in his book.

In Morphy's time there was no time limit and a player could take a long time calculate all the possibilities. Some of Morphy faulty combination could be over confidence or just a bad day. Doesn't mean he was not a genuis, just made him human and humans make mistakes.

This endgame I representing is one the reason I think Steinitz would of won a match against Morphy. Steinitz is practical player and a win is more important than a flashy combination that might not win or to play an accurate endgame to win or draw according to the demand of the position.

This game from a match with Loewenthal, on the 8th game.

It would have been Lasker taking the title from Morphy after a close match with Steinitz

That would definitley be an interesting match.  The unstoppable force vs. The immovable object.  Since i think defense wins games, id go with Steinitz.

Indeed, this is the big difference between Morphy and all his opponents and/or later players: Paul never thinked more than a few seconds or at worst not many minutes for his moves. Just brainwaves, no matter for a little (human) mistakes.

Bobby Fischer said that Steinitz's understanding of squares was better than Morphy's. 

I don't know why people believe that Morphy would have learned a great deal in the course of a single match. Morphy didn't seem to learn much during his match with Anderssen. If anything, Anderssen was the one who seemed to be learning how to play Morphy. A second match between those two would have been quite interesting.

Steinitz didn't just analyse Morphy's games, he published his annotations. Steinitz was in Morphy's shadow, and just as Karpov would a century later, Steinitz used that as motivation to improve. 

At his best, Steinitz was better than Morphy at his best. It's possible that Morphy could have improved, but he retired from chess. That is the single most pertinent detail regarding Morphy's desire to improve at chess after 1858.

Most GMs agree with Euwe's assessment about the progress of chess ideas. The Romantic era which Morphy and Anderssen represented was supplanted by the "Scientific" era of Steinitz. This was due to the relative understanding of chess. Put in a philosphical perspective, Steinitz' Scientific chess was the antithesis of Morphy's Romanticism. 

I believe Steinitz would have beaten Morphy in a long match. It would have been reasonably close, but decisive enough for all to know who was best. 

I will  chose peak Steinitz. Mihai Marin analyze well the matches of Morphy vs Anderssen. Morphy was outplayed positionaly by Anderssen.

There's a Lowenthal quote somewhere, speaking to other masters of the time who were saying "I'd have done OK against Morphy," and he says something like "perhaps you'd like the opinion of someone who actually played a series of games against him--none of you would have beat Morphy."

SmyslovFan wrote:

I don't know why people believe that Morphy would have learned a great deal in the course of a single match. Morphy didn't seem to learn much during his match with Anderssen. If anything, Anderssen was the one who seemed to be learning how to play Morphy. A second match between those two would have been quite interesting.

Steinitz didn't just analyse Morphy's games, he published his annotations. Steinitz was in Morphy's shadow, and just as Karpov would a century later, Steinitz used that as motivation to improve. 

At his best, Steinitz was better than Morphy at his best. It's possible that Morphy could have improved, but he retired from chess. That is the single most pertinent detail regarding Morphy's desire to improve at chess after 1858. 

Anderssen and Paulsen were much stronger than when they played Morphy; interesting that Paulsen has a plus score against Anderssen, must be one of Paulsen ace was his defensive techniques and the other two factor were his positional grasp and his investigation in the opening ( key the Sicilian defense contributions) were far superior than most players at that era. If someone like Paulsen had plus score against Anderssen, Steinitz will difinitely had good chances to beat Morphy in a match.

This is void. Everybody who played against Capablanca thought he will beat Alekhine in their world championship match. At his peak Stenitz is a universal player and is very strong in tactics and positional play. Andersenn outplayed Morphy positionaly.

That's odd.  Not only do the results indicate otherwise, but Valeri Beim pretty emphatically notes the superiority of Morphy's play in their match.

And not everyone who played both Alekhine and Capablanca believed in Capa's superiority.

isn't Steinitz really the father of scientific chess

Mihai Marin in his in depth analysis showed that Andersenn outplayed Morphy positionaly.

But still majority picked Capa and they are proven wrong.