Paul Morphy: Part 2, Lecture by GM Ben Finegold

Living before chess had a formal world championship, Morphy was widely acknowledged to be the greatest chess master of his era. He won the tournament of the First American Chess Congress of 1857, winning matches with each opponent by lopsided margins.

02:30 - Paul Morphy - Theodore Lichtenhein, New York 1857
12:56 - Paul Morphy - Johann Löewenthal, London 1859
20:13 - Paul Morphy - Jules de Rivière, Paris 1863
28:08 - James McConnell - Paul Morphy, New Orleans 1852
35:35 - Augustus Mongredien - Paul Morphy, Match 1859

Thank you Bill Wei for sponsoring this series!

#benfinegold #chess #PaulMorphy

[CokeVoAYCE]

can we give a second to recognize bill wei. this series was much more exciting than i thought it would be. good idea to sponsor this

[askthepizzaguy]

Man, Morphy's games are like the origin of all of Ben's rules. It's almost like Ben studied Morphy a lot and all the stuff Morphy did was really good and Ben learned how to sum up Morphy's genius in one-liners that are jokes, but also true most of the time.

[JimmyLundberg]

"During his 1850 visit to New Orleans, Löwenthal played Paul Morphy on two separate occasions, losing a total of three games straight. He was one of the first masters to play a match against Morphy after the latter's arrival in London in 1858. Morphy won with a score of nine wins, three losses, and two draws. "...I am convinced that I was vanquished by superior strength, " Löwenthal said about the match, as reported by an English writer named Frederick Edge, who wrote extensively about Morphy and other famous players in a book called The Exploits and Triumphs, in Europe, of Paul Morphy, the Chess Champion. No doubt aware that chess was Löwenthal's only source of livelihood, and conscious to not be considered a professional player himself, Morphy, after winning the match stakes of £100, presented Löwenthal with a gift of furniture valued at £120 for his new house." - Wikipedia

[AreaElf]

It's a shame that Paul Morphy is not considered to be the first world champion instead of Steinitz, because he sure was considered to be the world champion in his time. In the US, UK, and France, he was hailed as the "champion of the world" in all the newspapers. Esp., considering that there was nothing "official" about Steinitz beating Zukertort in 1886. Steinitz is simply a self-proclaimed world champion and everybody still buys into it today. In fact, Steinitz had already beaten Zukertort in a match in 1872, but he didn't consider himself world champion because Morphy, albeit retired from chess, was still considered to be the best player in the world (even by Steinitz himself). The reason Steinitz finally thought it appropriate to call himself world champion after his second match win against Zukertort in 1886 was because it was after Morphy's death in 1884. That's the true story.

[KancerKowboy]

Looking at Morphy Games in the 1980s was what got me hooked on chess. I still suck but love the game and respect the old school approach to the game.

[chanky]

Find yourself someone who loves you as much as Ben loves Morphy - seriously though, my favorite Ben videos are his morphy ones - they're both fun and educational

[Blaisem]

That knight retreat against Lichtenhein was the cherry on top of a gorgeous mating net. God damn I didn't know Morphy was so good.

[kevinmalone]

I only looked at one of Morphy's game, which was the opera house game, where he played against two members of European royalty, a Duke and a Count at the same time, and wiped them off the board in a pretty impressive style.

[vigilante]

I wonder how much money one would need to give Ben to get him to stand up, strike a pose and yell "it's Morphy time!" every time he has a winning mating attack.

[natalieharris]

You know who doesn't think Morphy is a 2000 player? Literally any 2000 player who looks at his games. Morphy would crush us all so hard lol

[CoachJohnMcGuirk]

Everyone is trying to compare him to modern contemporaries but if he were born in 2014 Paul Morphy would have quit chess by age 6 and would be a full time minecraft streamer by age 9.

[omf-p]

"If my student plays G4, I'd quit teaching. Guess what: I quit teaching." Hilarious!

[Gush]

I could watch Ben talk about Paul Morphy for days.

[tscoovh]

Some 10 years ago chess life magazine used Rybka 3 to analyze 20 best games of famous players after the opening....as far as ACCURACY, Morphy was #1, followed by Capablanca and Fischer....Fischer once said in 1964 that Morphy was the most ACCURATE player that ever lived...And he was right

[pschneider]

Morphy's games are just amazing. This man was a genius!

[a_doggo]

Absolutely fantastic lecture about my absolute favorite player. Thanks Ben, this is awesome!

[Sevenigma]

People should respect the mid to late 1800s chess world because imo it was the last time pure chess was played at a high level. The early 1900s were ravaged by one disaster after another that took more than a half of century to recover going right into the age of the computer. Those late 1800 games was the last high calibur chess environment where it was calculated all by a human

[petrutarabuta]

Thanks GM Finegold, and Bill Wei for sponsoring! Extremely instructive. GM Finegold's lectures, and the section about Morphy in Kasparov's My Great Predecessors Part I book, convinced me that Morphy was a supertalent and would have been one of the best players in the world today, if not the best, given time (maybe a year or two) to learn and familiarise himself with all the opening and endgame theory developments. I believe that if brought back to life today, with no time to familiarise himself with the latest developments, Morphy would have been strong enough to achieve the GM title today. Like GM Finegold mentioned in Part 1 of this lecture series, Morphy would have likely clearly defeated Steinitz, the first official world champion. Morphy defeated middle-aged Adolf Andersen much more clearly than Steinitz defeated a much older Andersen.

[davidbatchelder]

Ben, you are so funny on how you explain all things. Amazing

[Sevenigma]

Out of all the dream matches one could have in chess Morphy vs Fischer would be the ultimate