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Paul Charles
Morphy, "The Pride and Sorrow of
Chess," was the greatest
chess master of his time,
and was unofficially the 13th
chess champion of the world
from 1858-1862. Some
chess grandmasters even consider
Morphy to have been the greatest chess player who has ever
lived.
Morphy was born
in
New Orleans,
Louisiana to a wealthy and
distinguished family. According to
his uncle Ernest, Morphy
learned how to play chess on his own by simply watching
others play the game. His
uncle recounted how Morphy, after watching one game for
several hours between his father and him, told him
afterwards that he should have won the game. He even proved his claim by resetting
the pieces and demonstrating the win his uncle had missed.
By the
age of nine, he was already considered one of the best
players in New Orleans. In 1846, General
Winfield Scott visited the
city, and desired an evening of
chess with a strong local player. Chess was an infrequent
pastime of Scott's, but he enjoyed the game and considered
himself a formidable chess player. After dinner, Morphy was
brought in and introduced as his opponent. Seeing the small boy, Scott was at first
offended, thinking he was being made fun of; but when others assured him that the boy was a "chess prodigy" who would tax his skill,
Scott agreed to play. To General Scott's surprise, Morphy
beat him easily not once, but twice. The second time the boy
announced a forced checkmate after only six moves. Two
losses against a small boy was all General Scott's ego could
stand, and he declined further games and retired for the
night, never to play Morphy again.
In 1850, the
strong professional Hungarian
chess master
Johann Lowenthal visited
New Orleans, and could do no better than the amateur General
Scott could. Morphy was 12 when he encountered Lowenthal. Lowenthal had played young talented players before, and
expected to easily overcome Morphy, and considered the
informal match as a waste of time but accepted the offer as
a courtesy to the well-to-do Judge. When Lowenthal met him,
he patted him on the head in a patronizing manner. He
expected no more from Morphy than the usual talented young
players he had played before. When the first
game began, Lowenthal got to about move 12 and realized he
was up against something formidable. Lowenthal
played three games with Morphy during his New Orleans stay,
losing all three.
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"He
who plays Morphy must abandon all hope of
catching him in a trap, no matter how
cunningly laid, but must assume that it is
so clear to Morphy that there can be no
question of a false step."
– Adolf Anderssen (about
Morphy) |
After 1850,
Morphy did not play much chess for a long time. Studying
diligently, he graduated from
Spring Hill College in
Mobile, Alabama in the
spring of 1855. He then was
accepted to the University of Louisiana to study law. He
received an L.L.B. degree on April 7, 1857. Although Morphy
was able to recite the entire Civil Code of Louisiana from
memory, he was too young to be officially admitted to the
bar.
Consequently,
this left Morphy with a lot of free time. He received an
invitation to participate in the
First American Chess
Congress, to be held in
New York in the fall of 1857. He
won the competition by winning fourteen while losing one
with three draws. In the final round, he defeated the strong
German-American master
Louis Paulsen winning five
games, drawing two, and losing one (it was said that Louis
Paulsen was an extremely slow player and that made Morphy
nearly cry while playing with him). Morphy was now the chess
champion of the United States, and such was his strength of
play that many urged him to test his skill abroad.
He traveled to England
in the summer of 1858 and played a series of chess
matches against the leading English masters and defeated them all except English chess master
Howard Staunton who
promised to play but eventually declined. At times, Staunton
was physically present in the same room where Morphy easily
beat the English masters. He had every opportunity to
measure Morphy's talent, and he decided not to play a single
game against Morphy. While the few months he stayed in
England, most of his times were playing blind-fold games
with eight people simultaneously, he won every time he
played.
Staunton later conducted a newspaper campaign
to make it seem that it was Morphy's fault they did not
play, suggesting that Morphy did not have
the funds to serve as match stakes when in fact he was so
popular that numerous wealthy people and groups were willing
to stake him for any amount of money. Seeking new
opponents and now aware that Staunton had no real desire to
play, Morphy then crossed the English Channel and visited
France. There he went to the Café de la Regence in
Paris, which was the center
of chess in France. He played a match against
Daniel Harrwitz, the
resident chess professional, and soundly defeated him.
In Paris he
played a match against
the visiting German champion
Adolf Anderssen, who was
considered by many to be the best player in the world. Morphy triumphed easily, winning seven while
losing two, with two draws in 1858. When asked about his
defeat, Anderssen claimed to be out of practice, but also
admitted that Morphy was in any event the stronger player
and that he was fairly beaten. Anderssen also attested that
in his opinion, Morphy was the strongest player ever to play
the game, even stronger than the famous French champion
Louis de la Bourdonnais.
Returning to
England in the spring of 1859, a handicap match was set up
for him that pitted him against five masters (Jules
Arnous de Riviere,
Samuel Boden,
Thomas Barnes,
Henry Bird, and Lowenthal) simultaneously. Morphy won two games, drew two games, and lost one. No other
world champion has since duplicated this remarkable feat of playing five
of his closest rivals at the same time.
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"Morphy was probably the greatest
genius of them all."
– Bobby Fischer (about
Morphy) |
Shortly after,
Morphy started the long trip home, taking a ship back to
New York. Word of his
exploits in Europe had reached America, and he found himself
the man of the hour. Popular acclaim was such that he had to
travel home slowly, stopping in all the major cities. Famous people such as Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
honored him at testimonial banquets, manufacturers sought
his endorsements, newspapers asked him to write chess
columns, and a baseball club was named after him. He thrilled the
public with demonstrations of his skill, including more
blindfold chess exhibitions.
Prior to his
getting home, Morphy had issued an open challenge to anyone
in the world to play a match where he would give odds of
pawn and move and to play for any amount whatsoever. Finding
no takers, he declared himself retired from the game.
He then began planning the start of his law
career, but the
American Civil War broke
out in 1861 and ruined those hopes. Even after the
war, any efforts to start a law practice mostly brought in
potential clients that only wanted to talk chess with him.
Paul Morphy blindfold simul
at the Café de la Régence.
Financially secure thanks to his family
fortune, Morphy had effectively no profession and he spent
his final years depressed and wandering around the
French Quarter of New
Orleans, talking to people no one else could see, and having
feelings of persecution.
Morphy was
found dead in his bathtub as the result of a stroke on the afternoon of
July 10,
1884 by his mother. He died at the age of only
forty-seven. Despite the
fact that Morphy had not played chess publicly for over
twenty-five years, it was not until after his death that
Wilhelm Steinitz proclaimed that his match with
Johannes Zukertort would be for the
"official" world chess championship. Steinitz's forbearance
to claim the title while Morphy was still alive was a
recognition of Morphy's superior chess strength.
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