Fischer's persona was such that most Americans have no clue that Paul Morphy was the greatest chess player the country ever produced.
Edit:
All objective statements aside, Fischer was god in New York. One of the professors in my department grew up in New York and knows nothing about chess, but she has a commemorative knight in a wooden box to mark Spassky's defeat in their WC match.
The post that was quoted here has been removedYou sneaked in an edit. I certainly don't read the Daily Mail newspaper or website. When I read your original post I Googled "John Gotti" and "Bobby Fischer" and the Daily Mail story came up as the first hit. As it dated the same day as your post it was clear what you'd been reading.
Originally posted by sonhouseCertainly Staunton didn't want any part of Morphy and didn't seem able to admit that this was because he realised that Morphy was a vastly superior player. Apart from him, though, the other leading players in the world seemed eager to take on Morphy.
Wasn't it Staunton who was running away from Morphy?
Originally posted by coquetteI think Morphy is much overrated.
It is an interesting thought to ponder what Morphy might have accomplished if he'd lived in an era of chess clocks and organized chess.
He cowered the world!
Fischer is the greatest player from the United States.
Morphy was a brilliant tactician but his opposition was rather weak compared with today's grandmaster strength.
Unlike Kasparov, Morphy did not win his most brilliant games against strong players such as Karpov, Ivanchuk, Anand, Topalov, Shirov, etc.
"Morphy was a brilliant tactician but his opposition was rather weak compared
with today's grandmaster strength. "
But that was not Morphy's fault. He played and beat the best players of the day.
Everyone got better due to Morphy's play.
He lifted the game onto another level and every following generation
lifted it to where it is now.
Each generation learned and took it heroes from the previous generation.
You mentioned Kasparov, who is Kasparov's hero.....Alekhine.
I agree with you greenpawn, but I am always surprised when chess players say of Morphy that he is the greatest player of all times.
Even Fischer put Morphy on top of his list of the 10 greatest chess players in history he published in 1963, as if Morphy could have defeated Lasker or Alekhine.
Morphy was the greatest player of his era, not of all times.
Yes of his era.
Fischer said something like give him a month or two to get booked up
and he would be a contender.
Maybe, maybe not. We will never know.
But his influence on the game and the publicity he brought to the game
in just 4 active years! should not be underrated.
His games inspired Steinitz (who was known for a while as 'The Austrian Morphy.'😉
Steinitz took the game up a level.
Tarrasch & Lasker took the game that next step up.
Capablanca raised the bar further.
Nimzovitch, Reti, Tartakower etc. furthered our understainding of the game.
And bit by bit each generation stands on the shoulders of the previous crowd
and added to game till we are here today.
And when they write the final history of chess computers will have the last
chapter.
Somewhere in the middle of 'Chess the Complete History of this Forgotten Game'
will be a sentence dedicated to greenpawn.
"Despite his valiant attempts to set the game back 150 years, greenpawn, that
most handsome of chess players, failed.