Chess and Paul Morphy

There are people who play poker, people who play dominoes, people who play Uno, people who play Counter Strike… and then there are people who play chess. I am one of the latter. Chess is my favorite board game of all time. Why? Because it is a mental war game! It requires deep thought, focus, and creativity. Opponents have to prepare both a defense and an attack and must endeavor to outwit each other… aiming for the precious capture of the enemy king… the checkmate! I learned to play chess when I was 13 years old and have been hooked ever since. I would be lying to you if I were to tell you that I have always played throughout the years. In fact, it is a hobby that I leave and come back to from time to time. This is because in my social circles, hardly anybody knows how to play chess… and if they do, they usually aren’t good at it. It is not that fun to play with someone who only knows how to move the pieces, the game requires the strategy of a knowledgeable opponent to make it interesting. I used to think I was a strong player in my teens and in my early 20s. That was until I started playing with a 40 year-old co-worker named Victor. Oh, my God… the guy annihilated me so bad that I still have nightmares! He would even give me odds of a knight and a bishop! It hurt my ego so I started reading chess books and opening theory. I learned tips and tricks and used them accordingly against him. It took weeks but then he would only give me a pawn… and soon we started our games on equal terms. I must have played over a hundred games with him! I did manage to beat him about 40% of the time eventually. Whatever I learned, he would learn from me during our matches, so I was only making him stronger! I started employing the Queen’s Indian Defence, the Caro-Kann, the Grünfeld Defence and the Queen Gambit’s Accepted! Sadly, I changed jobs and never saw him again. I still miss our grand chess games during our breaks and lunch hour.

Since Victor was a strong player by my standards I decided to read chess books… to become a better player. However, with school and other work (and the fact that nobody at home wanted to play chess), I walked out on my hobby. I just recently returned in full force! I bought a large, hand-carved wooden chess set made in Bethlehem worth $300 and I also bought Garry Kasparov’s book, On My Great Predecessors. It is part one of a 5-part series in which the 13th world champion, Kasparov, analyses the games of the early masters and tracks the evolution of chess to modern times. Kasparov is actually considered one of the greatest players to ever play the game, with a peak FIDE (the mafia that organizes chess tournaments) Elo rating of 2851 in addition to him being World Chess Champion from 1985-2000. The book is a compilation of masterpieces played by the best players both before and after the World Chess Championship was established and includes select games from the first four official world champions: Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine. It is interesting to note that there were several “unofficial” world champions… Philidor, Le Bourdannais, Staunton… and most notably Adolf Anderssen of Germany and the great Paul Morphy of America. These players were vastly ahead of their time. Anderssen dazzled everyone with his combination play in which he often sacrificed a rook, a bishop, even a queen to checkmate his opponents! He was the strongest player in Europe with no equal… that is, until “The Pride and Sorrow of Chess”, Paul Morphy, obliterated all opposition in both the New and Old Worlds.

Paul Morphy is actually my favorite chess player of all time! I would like to tell you about him. As Kasparov states in his book, Morphy was a “super-genius”. He was the epitome of a child prodigy. Born in New Orleans in 1837, he always surprised his family with his intelligence and acute memory. He learned chess from his father and his uncle, who valued chess as a family past-time. He learned just by looking at his father and uncle play, and upon their finishing a certain game, Morphy pointed out that his uncle had missed a “checkmate”. They were in shock since they did not even think he knew how to move the pieces, much less know any tactics. Morphy even arranged the chess board and demonstrated how his uncle had missed the checkmate! Naturally, his family encouraged him to play at the local chess club and at home, and soon, he made everyone his bitch… General Winfield Scott, while camping in New Orleans, asked his aides to bring him the town’s strongest chess player for an evening’s game. The general thought of himself as an extraordinary player and felt insulted when his aides brought him a 9 year-old Morphy, he thought it was a prank but his aides told him that everyone said the young Morphy was the strongest player around. Needless to say, Morphy vanquished the General not once, but twice. The General refused further games with him and preferred to go to bed! Sometime later, Löwenthal, one of Europe’s distinguished masters, visited New Orleans and consented to play with a 12 year-old Morphy… a few moves into the very first game and he knew he was facing a chess monster… he swiftly lost 3 games during his visit. Morphy went to get a law degree by the age of 19, and legend has it that he memorized all of Louisiana’s penal codes! However, he had to wait until he was of 21 years of age to practice law, so he decided to return to chess in the meantime. The rest is history. He easily became national chess champion by beating Paulsen, a very strong chess player. He then set off in 1958 to England in search of a match with the great English master, Staunton. He easily beat all the top English masters and Staunton, out of fear, refused to play him. Also, he beat Löwenthal yet again (+9 -3 =2)! However, Morphy was nice enough to buy his defeated opponent furniture with the prize money. Not satisfied, he crossed the channel into France. There, he beat all the top French players! Still not content, he challenged the awesome Adolf Anderssen to a match. Anderssen was not a coward like Staunton and accepted if only Morphy would wait until Christmas vacations since he had teaching duties. Morphy agreed and even pledged to pay Anderssen’s travelling expenses! While he thus waited for the German master, he kept busy crushing all opposition in grand style, even playing blindfold games with multiple opponents as exhibitions! He crushed two strong amateurs, the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard, who consulted with each other as to what to move during an opera, the well known “opera game“. Morphy, perhaps irritated because he wanted to see the performance, quickly destroyed his opponents in a mere 17 moves. When December arrived, Anderssen finally made it to Paris. Anderssen was given the title of ‘chess romantic’ and no one could match his combinations on the board. However, combinations, in which emphasis was placed on attacking as the best type of defense was to prove useless with the advent of positional theory, in which small advantages by position could render combinations ineffective. Paul Morphy, though also a combination genius, was the forefather of modern chess because his positional play was here to stay. Later, Steinitz would publish the first positional theories and made them known to the world. Reckless combinations were to become a thing of the past for the most part. Upon Anderssen’s arrival, Paul Morphy was very ill from an intestinal infection and was being treated with leeches. Morphy, subsequently, lost the first game against Anderssen, then forced a draw on the second game, and then won five in a row! The final score was +7 -2 =2 (Seven wins, two losses, and two draws)! Needless to say, he was a celebrity and Paris hosted a banquet in his honor, he was crowned ‘World Chess Champion’ (It is a pity that the official event of World Chess Championship was not established yet, so Morphy will always be “unofficial” world chess champion in the books). Upon returning to America, Morphy was hailed as a hero and was given a grand reception. In a short two years, he did something never before seen. Unfortunately, Morphy gave up serious chess competition forever upon his return. With the start of the Civil War, he was unable to practice law adequately and people sought him more for chess matters than for legal affairs. As it is with certain geniuses, Morphy started to exhibit signs of mental disorder. The disease progressed and he began to lose his grasp on reality, walking the streets of New Orleans everyday, disoriented and without purpose. He died of a stroke at the relatively young age of 47, in 1884. However, he will always be a chess immortal and many world champions since still regard him the best of them all.