Heroes + Morphing Morphy

A piece of fun and an excuse to show some Morphy Magic
including the Morphy Time Bomb.

Found a game where some lad missed a chance to
mate quite nicely with two Knights. (no it was one Knight).

Blog 4

All the folks in the Morphy's Maniacs Clan salute you for your excellent blog!

It was just a skit to see if anyone copied any Morphy games,
not a good going over. Always nice to introduce newer players
to PCM though. Someone, somewhere will be a better player for it.

My one regret with Morphy is how on earth did he miss that quicker
and beautiful mate v Paulsen. Playing it would have put the game
up there with Marshal's gold coin game. It would topped the 'Evergreen'
and 'The Immortal.' (two games BTW I've always thought are gruesome and ugly.)
It would even have outshone his night at Opera.

You look at the position. (Black to play)


1...Rg2 with the idea of Rxh2 and mate on h1 or Rxf2+ with killing discovered
and double checks. It's the move. You see it right away.

PCM played 1...Bg2+ and Paulsen resigned 6 moves later.

But this finish would have been so worthy of the earlier Queen sac.

He gave us so many beautiful games with combinations 100
times more difficult than this (some played in blindfold simuls!!)
and yet this flawed masterpeice hangs over him.
How did he miss it? The man was a genius, an artist.

Originally posted by greenpawn34
It was just a skit to see if anyone copied any Morphy games,
not a good going over. Always nice to introduce newer players
to PCM though. Someone, somewhere will be a better player for it.

My one regret with Morphy is how on earth did he miss that quicker
and beautiful mate v Paulsen. Playing it would have put the game
up there with Marshal's gold ...[text shortened]... ..Rg1 still mates.} 4... Rg1 {Mate. One of the great unheard melodies of chess.} [/pgn]

How did black get into such a horrible position (piece wise that is)? Was it tactically calculated he would reach this winning position or was it luck? I haven't seen the game.

Originally posted by sonhouse
How did black get into such a horrible position (piece wise that is)? Was it tactically calculated he would reach this winning position or was it luck? I haven't seen the game.

Morphy sacrificed his Queen.

Hey,

from gp's post it sounded like morphy went on to win, even without this beautiful ending. so, since he won, one can call it a 'queen sac', not a 'blunder' 😉

Greetings,
T.

I'm pretty sure Morphy knew what he was doing in reaching that position.

Sorry I thought everyone knew this game.

Come on lads you have to know your classics. All the good players do,
it's why we call them good players.

Here is the game with some light notes.

Originally posted by greenpawn34

Come on lads you have to know your classics. All the good players do,
it's why we call them good players.

Amen! Rec'd.

Originally posted by greenpawn34
Sorry I thought everyone knew this game.

Come on lads you have to know your classics. All the good players do,
it's why we call them good players.

Here is the game with some light notes.

[pgn]
. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bb5 Bc5 {As always Morphy is willing to sac a pawn for free development.} 5. O-O O-O 6. Nxe5 Re8 7. Nxc6 dxc6 8. Bc4 b5 ...[text shortened]... best. What a great shame. I'm glad he won though. If he had lost that game.......... }[/pgn]

Its funny. I've never seen this missed mate mentioned once anywhere accept on RHP but I have seen the game mentioned many times.

Hi Tom Tom.

Some lads go over board when showing Morphy (and Capablanca) games.
I do to the extent that I try to convey the pleasure playing over his
combinations and his free style gives to me.

But you have to point out the flies in the ointment, especially if
they are a instructive and as pretty as the Mate Morphy missed.

Zuckertort and Steinitz point out the missed mates in their writings.
Purdy's notes on this game called Morphy "lazy" adding.

"The careless execution cannot dim the brilliance of the conception."

Rubinstein's kind of shrugs his shoulders by saying who cares:
"I could give a concert with the wrong notes I played."
And so could we all. A win is a win after all.

"A win is a win after all." Nah. If the chance appears you have to play
to the crowd. That was the Morphy (and Tal) way and that is why I'm still baffled
and oh so disapointed (for him as well) why he never played it.

The Worlds Greatest Games of Chess by Burgesss, Emms and Nunn.
Games arranged in order of date. They jump from 1852 to 1883 with no
games in between. If in 1857 PCM had played 23...Rg2 then that game
would have been in there. Leaving it out would have caused a riot.

Infact there are no Mprphy games in that collection, a sad omission,
though his influence is seen often enough.

500 Master Games by Tartakower and Du Mont is still the best collection
of games from the days gone by. great notes, wonderful wonderful games.
Instructive and inspiring. A brilliant chess book.

The Worlds Greatest Games of Chess according to Burgesss, Emms and Nunn.
Is OK, some of the games are just too heavily analysed (Burgess in particuliar
is guilty of this.) The games that Nunn notes up are just about right.

But who ever wrote in the intorduction about the best way
to use the book:

"Alternatively and preferably play over the moves using a suitable
computer program (for example ChessBase).
Keeping a program such a Fritz running in the background will
reveal analytical points we had no space to include in the book."

Wants their head slamming in a door.

Edit:

Missed out a note I wanted to put in re the Paulsen - Morphy game.

Here:


White played the odd looking 16.Ra2.

The idea being to challenge the Queen on d3 with Qc2.
Paulsen most likely dismissed 16.Qa6 because Black has 16...Qc2
and White cannot free himself with d4 because the pawn on c3 hangs.


A case of being good enough to see the consequence of a move
but not being good enough to judge it.

A weaker player would not have seen the Qc2 idea and played Qa6!

(the moral being - don't get good) 😉

Of course he should have played 16.Qa6 right away because giving Morphy
that extra tempo to swing his Rook across to e8 made the Queen sac work.
Here you will see that because White allowed Re8 he cannot play 20.Rg1.


20. Rg1 Rxg1+ followed by Re1 mates.

Morphy had presumably analysed that he was winning material after the queen sac and didn't bother looking for a mate. You see that earlier in the game as well after 8.Bc4, he plays to win back his pawn. 8... Nxe4 doesn't work, so he played the ugly 8... b5 first.
On a better day he would have stuck to his develop and attack principles and charged at the poorly defended white king with 8... Ng4!.

Here's a game in this line where white sacs a knight on move 7 and goes on to win!

Good game. Cheers.

According to sources Morphy took 12 minutes to play Qxf3.
(by all acounts a long time for a Morphy think).

Perhaps he saw that line with Paulsen giving back the Queen
was practically forced, knew it was a winner and stuck with it.

He was after all now playing a position in a game he himself
must have known that at one time was very difficult for him,
perhaps even losing.

Some players find it hard to adjust after such a spin around and
there are cases of players, good players, who have been on the back
foot for most of the game agreeing draws in the better position
just thankful they did not get beat.

Who knows? He may have seen at the very worst he has a perpetual
and went for it. Botvinik when he went for his famous cambo v Capablanca
at the 1938 AVRO Tournament admits he could not see it all but saw .
the perpetual so went for it.

A wonderful idea which sowed the seeds of many masterpieces to come.
It's just a pity and surprsing the beautiful mate was not played.

somewhat related.

It's obvious you hold Morphy in high regard.And rightfully so,of course.
But what do you think of his predecessor/successor,Anderssen?