What is your Morphy number?

I played a WFM who played my coach who played this IM who beat Nakamura who played Carlsen (etc)

Alternatively.....I'm played the same IM in daily who beat Naka, etc

i think i see the future of this thread.....

"my sister in law's cousin's third uncle had a friend whose husband's history teacher read an article about magnus. 

so, two!"

My Morphy number is 7 or 8. I played someone who played someone who played Tal.

I received a book " The Immortal Game" a History of Chess by David Shenk from my oldest son for Christmas. I had read the transcripts of chess matches related to Morphy, but never knew his history before this book. Wow, what an amazing story!  Like many of the exceptional players, I suspect he had mental issues that both gave him a perspective above the normal and brought him down into a madness (probably schizophrenia?) that ended his interest/career as a world class player, I'll never reach the lineage that many of you have cited, but good for you! You are special.

Peace and Love - Sbumle

if there were a list of members here with no mental issues, it would be a short topic.

9

I played a friend of a GM who played Magnus, who played Kasparov, who played Tal, who played Keres, etc.

I guess my best path would probably be Emory Tate's number + 2.

As for going back through anecdotal evidence presented by friends or relatives...hearsay doesn't count.  If it did, then the vast majority of adult players in the US would claim to know somebody who has drawn Fischer in a simul ...

Lots of people make claims to their grandkids that are complete BS.  Also, all those autographs you get from your grandpa...forged by your grandpa.

My Morphy number is 5.  I've played someone who played Sam Reshevsky, whose number was 3.

I'm still ACTUALLY laughing out loud at that statement,,,,,well played!  : )

5: I played Bisguier who played Euwe who played Mieses who played Anderssen who played Morphy.

I probably go deep into infinity.

5 by two different paths. (Najdorf played many many years. If you can connect to him you'll have a low number.)

Yeah, I noticed that a few hours ago.

I guess I'm not important enough to make it into the Wikipedia.

Henry Bird & Emanuel Lasker were both at the famous round-robin Hastings tournament of 1895. Bird has MN 1, and so all the other 21 players must have at most MN 2. Blackburne was another, and he played ten of thousands of games in his career - but most aren’t documented today. Really this question if documentation is the limiting factor, otherwise the growth rate in Wikipedia would be exponential. I can’t believe Kasparov can be as low as 5 in reality.

I played aman hambelton and @medvegy and they have played hundereds , idk specifically, probably 1000

I played someone who actually beat Naroditsky, who played Hikaru, who played Magnus. So that's an 8?

OK I looked up the paths for mine. I think that once you connect to Najdorf or Reshevsky or Botvinnik you will have a low number. Naturally, it's an interesting bit of historical trivia but a low number does not mean a good player: 

Morphy number=5: 
  I(5) played Boris Kogan(4) and Ruben Shocron(4). 
  Shocron played Fischer(4) and Najdorf(3). 
  Najdorf (3) Played Tartkower(2). Tartakower played Bird(1)
  and Mortimer(1) who played Morphy.

Me - TremendousTactics - Daniel Naroditsky - Hikaru Nakamura - Magnus Carlsen - Anatoly Karpov - Samuel Reshevsky - Emmanuel Lasker - Paul Morphy.

I couldn't find Tartakower-Bird offhand but will keep looking. Bird did have a LONG career playing in 1903 even. He played Lasker, Maroczy, Mason, Tarrasch, Pilsbury ...

By the way, he did play Mortimer,  https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1455250 , at least!