Steinitz vs Morphy

The Morphy and Harrwitz match 1858: especially the first game, Harriwitz played extremely well. Morphy's Dutch defense was very hyper-modern,and Harrwitz handle it poorly in the opening.

well said....

LOL!

Just look at their records against Adolph Anderssen. Morphy would have CRUSHED Steinitz in a match. I don't understand how anyone can believe otherwise. Seriously. lol Why is this topic 16 pages long? We're not talking about who had a greater impact on the game, who contributed more, etc. The Question is.. who was the stronger chess player. Well, Paul Morphy was most certainly the stronger player. There's your answer. Can we let this topic die now. 

charousekchess84 wrote:

Just look at their records against Adolph Anderssen. Morphy would have CRUSHED Steinitz in a match. I don't understand how anyone can believe otherwise. Seriously. lol Why is this topic 16 pages long? We're not talking about who had a greater impact on the game, who contributed more, etc. The Question is.. who was the stronger chess player. Well, Paul Morphy was most certainly the stronger player. There's your answer. Can we let this topic die now. 

This argument is a model of precision and clarity.

Steinitz didn't see marked improvement in his chess until after 1870. He reached his peak after 1880. His last game against Anderssen was 1873, and yet he still beat Anderssen in a match. 

There aren't many players that both Morphy and Steinitz faced, and fewer that were the same age as Steinitz and Morphy. Zukertort was a great attacking player in the same mold as Morphy. He had a plus score against Anderssen, but not as great as Morphy had (33 wins, 26 losses, and 6 draws compared to Morphy's (12 wins 3 losses 2 draws). 

Steinitz beat Zukertort 19-9 with 12 draws. 

My point is that these comparisons of how players did against others doesn't really add to an understanding of how Steinitz would have done against Morphy. 

We have the games the two giants played. Morphy was the best player on the planet in the 1850s and 1860s. Steinitz was the best player on the planet from about 1870 until Lasker dethroned him in 1894.

In 1858, Morphy was nearly 20 years ahead of everyone else. By 1878, Steinitz finally eclipsed Morphy. There are very few times, if ever, in modern chess history that anyone was as far ahead of the field as Morphy was. But Steinitz was the one to bridge that gap.

re: Fabelhaft: No one loves Steinitz :-) 

Fischer put both Morphy and Steinitz in his top players of all time. Wrong looks/origin?? Puh-leeze! We are chess players (OK, I'm a hack but I was a chess player before my brain turned 90.) ;-)

Real chessplayers prefer Morphy. In a brawl at the board the edge goes to Steinitz. Blackburne if he were sober...which he seldom was.

Steintiz develop a lot opening theories and positional concepts, pawn chain, over protection, minority attack and exploring small advantage ( weak pawns or squares) and the two bishops or the superior bishop versus the limited knight.

 His games we learn how to conduct it with a proper plan and executed correctly.

These kind of game we learn how to attack and we see these mistakes often in our games. 

  Phony Benoni wrote that studying past masters is more beneficial than modern masters.

Of course, many 19th century games are going to be of "poor" quality to today's players. But, paradoxically, the "average" player will learn more from games like this than from a masterpiece from Fischer or Kasparov or Carlsen. You have to master the simple ideas behind games like this before you can comprehend the subtler ideas of today's super-GMs.

Bobby Fischer did say that Steinitz had a "better understanding of squares" than Morphy. 

Basing who will win based on how they did with a common opponent is not a good gauge. Kasparov demolished Shirov 15 to 0. You would think that kramnik will do the same to Shirov? But that is not the case as Kramnik beat Shirov 15 to 12. Kramnik has a close record with Kasparov.

So, do we have a verdict here? Or is this one of these never-ending threads that people will never agree upon? :)

Who is "Phony Benoni"? 

zBorris wrote:

yureesystem wrote:

These kind of game we learn how to attack and we see these mistakes often in our games. 

  Phony Benoni wrote that studying past masters is more beneficial than modern masters.

Who is "Phony Benoni"?   

He is a player who does a lot kibitzing in chessgames.com, his analysis and comments seem very solid expert strength.

No, chess is not 99% tactics.  Chess is 100% tactics.  Positional concepts exist only because the tactics are often too deep for any human (or machine) to calculate or even perceive.  We use positional ideas (weak squares, control of the center, etc.) as crutches because we can't see to the end of the game.  A perfect chess player wouldn't have to know anything at all about "positional" ideas.  For the rest of us mortals, they're indispensable.

My brain was not ready for this

Steinitz would not lose.

There shouldn't even be a debate, Morphy by a mile.

If you never saw the Zukertort-Steinitz match or games, you could be excused for believing this. 

Zukertort was known as the Polish Morphy and played many incredible tactical combinations. Steinitz' lifetime record against him according to Chessgames.com was 19-9 with 12 draws. 

From a purely objective perspective, using only the games the players actually played rather than believing that one player could improve dramatically (which of course is possible), Steinitz at his best would have beaten Morphy by about the same score as he did Zukertort. 

The argument in favor of Morphy is that he could have improved if he'd faced a tough opponent such as Steinitz. But that's supposition and not based on the quality of the games he actually played. 

Morphy is known as the Pride and Sorrow of Chess because he gave it up before he reached his full potential. 

I am a attacker and my favor players are attacker but Smyslov Fan is totally correct. Steinitz positional  understanding and endgame technique out-weight Morphy's attacking and tactical abilities, the players that give Morphy the most problems was Barnes and Paulsen because they were great defenders and so was Steinitz and better than Paulsen and Barnes.

Morphy's +5-1=2 score vs Paulsen suggests his problems with Paulsen were minimal at best

Similarly,  when Morphy first arrived in England, he played Thomas Barnes a series of 26 games.  Out of the first ten games, they each won 5. Out off the remaining 16 games Barnes won only 2.   It seems reasonable to conjecture that either Morphy recovered from his 11 day trans-Atlantic voyage, indicating his problem was never with Barnes himself, or that he almost completely solved his so called problems with Barnes fairy quickly.