Paul Morphy the greatest chess player A.K.A god of chess

Sir Paul Morphy is the greatest chess player ever. He played with a style that shows he knew everything, Morphy attacked with all his pieces but his king could not be harmed even though players attack. More than being the most aggressive player Morphy knew how to defend and avoid perpetual checks. Morphy defended less because he was the aggressor in all his games. The king of positional sacrifice and forced mates. Paul Morphy played chess the correct way because his tactical  style avoided unnecessary draws. Morphy is the god of chess, never mind what the unbelievers say. Please dont compare Morphy to kasparov or Carlsen because Morphy did not have fritz or stockfish to help him prepare, he never had the theory to guide him but he created true magic on the chess board and most chess engines agree that he played the strongest moves. Why do chess players look down on Paul Morphy when we know very well if Morphy came back he would beat every player alive. Plus Paul Morphy never showed his best chess because no one was there to push him to his great, Kasparov had karpov to push him to his best. Paul Morphy is a god of chess.

Morphy didn't play the best European masters, when he had chance he turn it down. I played about over four games of Morphy and he had two flaws, positional play and endgame, Steinitz would of beat Morphy, better opening, positional play and endgame and great defender.

Morphy and Steinitz both had an opponent in common: Anderssen.

Morphy steamrolled Anderssen with complete ease (12-3).

Steinitz won his match against Anderssen, too, but it was near-even struggle (12-11).

Anderssen has also gone on record saying that, in his opinion, Morphy was the strongest player to ever play the game.

Steinitz was a powerhouse player, too—no doubt. But he wasn't Morphy. :)

Hmmm, at 58 olds Anderssen was much stronger than at 40. You must not went through match games in Steinitz, that was a battle. Anderssen played poorly against Morphy but when he played the Anderssen opening 1.a3, Anderssen outplay Morphy positionally.

Well, I guess since there isn't really a topic I can ask this question.

It's been rehashed so many times "What if Morphy played Carlsen?" But this seems unfair. People usually bring up things like opening theory and computer preparation to Carlsen's advantage. My question is: How high rated would morphy be if he were a modern chess player? The "opening theory" advantage that modern GMs would have over Morphy seems very weak when you read about how quickly and accurately Morphy learned opening theory. In addition, if he were born today he might've become a professional chess player and devoted more than just a paltry amount of time to the study of the game. (Remember that Morphy played the way he did without any kind of rigid study routine that modern professional chess players have. No one pushed him to have one so he just studied what he wnated to for as long as he wanted to.) In addition he would have a lot more positional and endgame knowledge because he would have access to everythign we have now. I think he would easily crush 2850 or possibly 2900 when you consider his at least 2600 level strength with ALL of these factors going against him.

Not to mention perhaps the bigget thing: He played at 2600 strength after just 4 years of active play, holy crap! And his child hood, rather than being a steady stream of rising through scholastic tournaments and becoming a high school champion and getting titles (a luxury modern professional chess players grow up with) was just a few haphazord games thrown about and some blindfold matches. No push to study even close to as much as people like Carlsen did when they were kids and hardly any tournament experience- again, contrasted with players today.

And he reached 2600 level play!

The downside is that everyone would suck at chess, because we wouldn't have access to Paul Morph'y games.

Morphy did not play the best European masters, let me name a few of them, Kolisch ( This great master was one of the few who did positional exchange sacrfices and won in the endgame), Hirschfeld, Suhle, Morphy refuse to play against his old antogonists and much improve Anderssen and Paulsen and last Steinitz, I am even naming other great European masters that Morphy refuse to play against. Steinitz prove it on the board and Morphy run away the from the challenge, you guys should really read more on Morphy and not speculate what he could of done.

Steinitz played Chigorin, Pllisbury, Tarrasch, Zukertort, Gunsberg, Blackbunre, Schlechter,Maroczy, Janowsky and Lasker; Steinitz prove he was a worthy master and Morphy run away from the  challenge, Paul could of played the masters I listed above but didn't. So stop speculating what Morphy could of done but didn't do because he refuse to take up the challenge.

The people you say Morphy avoided were all around AFTER he gave up chess.

 Living on past glories doesn't make Morphy the greatest player, if he was like Steinitz and played Lasker and beat him, I would of said Morphy is the greatest player ever. Even Lasker said Morphy was lacking, I will trust his opinion over any amateur.

2350, on a good day.

Read the rest of my post.

Computer analysis shows him to be at least objectively GM strength without any of the help moden GMs have such as opening theory and stong competition.

You're talking about someone who, every time the computer says mate in 10 or mate in 12, he plays every single move perfectly all the way to mate- with the exception of a famous mate in 5 that he missed in a blindfold simul.

That's funny, how would computer analysis possibly show such a thing? Morphy mostly played against woodpushers, and not a single time against a single really strong opponent. Which he's not to blame for, they didn't exist at that time. It's not very difficult to play near perfect chess against weak players. Every 2200 player can do that.

Fresh out of the time machine Morphy would not be able to compete with GMs.

If Morphy had been born in the year 1990, sure, he'd probably be a really strong GM if he put in the time and effort.

As Rumo said though... just look at his games. A lot of his opponents didn't even develop their pieces and castle!

People just have no idea how strong modern GMs are. A friend of mine is a 2550 rated player, and he's a force of nature, destroying good players (not the likes Morphy played against) seemingly with ease. The idea that Morphy, with his limitations and his lack of knowledge from more than 100 years of chess development, would have been stronger than him, is plainly ridiculous.

I feel it's wrong to extol Morphy, or anyone else for that matter, as the greatest player ever just as it would be wrong to deny that Morphy was the best player of his time.  Morphy played or offered to play the best opponents during his chess tour, all on their own terms.  Soured on chess politics, cajoled by his mother to quit public chess, and wanting to get on with his career, even before that European sojourn ended, he had expressed his intentions to bow out of the public chess arena. Due to his fame and publicity, this proved much harder than he had anticipated.  There is no doubt that upon returning to America, he did his best to dissuade serious challenges for formal matches and used his rightful insistance upon odds as a means not to play.

Returning to Europe in 1863 in order to escape the indignities of the Union occupation of New Orleans, Morphy did play with his good friends, Arnous de Rivière and Gabriel-Éloy Doazan, but only sans façon.  On his way there, he stopped in Cuba and did his hosts the honor of playing with them and with Golomayo, of course.  Ignatz Kolisch, who was in England, came to Paris and renewed an earlier long distant challenge in which Morphy said he would accept should he ever return to Paris.  But Morphy had already resolved not to play anymore serious chess and replied that Kolisch's recent unfavorable results againt Paulsen and Anderssen made accepting a challenge impossible since then, Morphy would be bound to play both Paulsen (to whom he extended odds in their previous match negotiations) and Anderssen (to whom he would have also offered odds, due to the one-side match).  So, playing Kolisch, even had Morphy not retired, would have been unlikely without odds anyway.  That's the way chess worked back then.  For the record, when Morphy beat Anderssen, Anderssen was 40; when Steinitz beat him, Anderssen had just turned 48 (not 58).  Morphy's score was +7-2=2; Anderssen played 1.a3 three times (in games 6, 8 and 10) with the result of +1-1=1.  In 1866 -the time form which Steinitz claimed to have been WC - Steinitz beat Anderssen +8-6, no draws.

Returning to Paris in 1867, Morphy was so disassociated with chess he turned down the chance to play one of his biggest fans, A. Petroff. 

I think picking isolated facts and drawing hasty, actually unwarranted, conclusions without even trying to understand or appreciate the overall picture - which includes not just the people involved but the culture of the times - leads nowhere.

Thing is, Morphy played, intuitively, at a master level. No engine analysis needed. No modern theory required. No grandmaster games to review.

Who needs that stuff? (Well, I do, but Morphy certainly didn't. :D)

Just learn how the pieces move, then play naturally at a level beyond anyone else in your time, with seemingly little effort or study at all.

If only we could all be so gifted!