Paul Morphy - Some Sweets & Shorts

Introduction

Many texts were already written about the american chess player Paul Morphy from New Orleans. Readers will find a small selection of additional texts and videos about Paul Morphy and his life & achievements at the end of this blog post.

The life of Paul Morphy - a brief summary

Paul Morphy was born in 1837 and learned chess from his father & uncle, both quite invested chess players themselves. Morphy achieved a law degree in 1857 and travelled to Europe shortly after. There, he wanted to play the old masters and spend some time, as he was not old enough to practice law at home.
Upon his return from europe in 1859 he retired from tournament chess to pursue a law career. Unfortunately his law career never took off and Paul Morphy died in 1884 from a stroke.

Paul Morphy and his chess

Morphy is known for his dynamic chess. He would often play blindfolded or give his opponents pawn or piece odds, but still win. Many chess historians claim that Morphys chess understanding was way ahead of his time and peers, and it is still unclear how Morphy was able to achieve this - chess literature was still in its infancy and training material not readily available.

However, critics of Paul Morphy correctly point out that Morphy played many games against weak(er) players, which would explain his convincing wins. While partially true, most of his games do indeed show a surprisingly high accuracy by modern Stockfish 14 standards (although Morphy - who was never officially a world chess champion - is frequently not included in comprehensive analyses such as here or here) .

Of course, there are some convincing match results, too. Most often cited is the score between Morphy vs. Adolf Anderssen, where Morphy won with +7−2=2 (and in the same year of 1858 he won another match against Anderssen with +5−1=0). This is notable, because Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official world chess champion, scored worse against Anderssen, namely +8−6=0 in 1866.

Wikipedia has a good enough overview of Morphys match results here.

Let's have a look at 3 lesser known Morphy games that all finished in less than 20 moves!

Game 1: Morphy vs. Conway, 1859

Game 2: Maurian vs. Morphy, 1854

Game 3: Morphy vs. Journoud, 1858

Conclusion

Many Morphy games, even when he played against weaker opponents, are able to show us that (A) piece development is very important and that, of course, (B) a successfully orchestrated attack outweights any material deficits. Studying games of Morphy - even when the openings played often appear strange to our modern point of view - certainly shed some light on how to play dynamic chess.

Further Watching & Reading

Lecture by Lucas Anderson, 2015, The Life and Chess of Paul Morphy
Lecture by GM Ben Finegold, 2014, The Legend: Paul Morphy
Lecture by GM Ben Finegold, 2013, The Games of Paul Morphy
Game Analysis by GM Ben Finegold, 2017, The Opera Game
Text by C.A.Buck, 1902, Paul Morphy - His Later Life