AAdditional Games
- Chessgames
- Game, Paul Morphy vs. Martinez, Unauthenticated, circa 1865.
Paul Charles Morphy
June 22, 1837 - July 10, 1884
American Chess Congress 1857. Players at the first American Chess Congress, 1857. Morphy seated at right playing with Paulsen. The beardless youth near centre of top row is D.W. Fiske.
Lewis Elkin and Paul Charles Morphy, 1859
Just One Paul Morphy 26 Mar 1911, Sun The Buffalo Times (Buffalo, New York) Newspapers.com
Just One Paul Morphy. — After beating the American chess champion, Marshall, and vanquishing many of the cleverest chess-players in the country, a young Cuban, Capablanca, has won the first place in the international chess tournament at San Sebastian, Spain. They are calling Capablanca a second Paul Morphy. They called Harry Pillsbury that, when he won the Hastings tournament sixteen years ago. They called Marshall that too. There has scarcely been a brilliant chess player in the last fifty years whom admirers have not dubbed “another Morphy.” To nickname a man “Paul Morphy” is, from a chess player's standpoint, the highest compliment that can be paid him.
In 1857, '58 and '59, Paul Morphy set the chess world in a furore never equaled before or since Morphy was a youthful Louisianian of good family, excellent education and charming manners. He regarded chess as a recreation, was never a grubbing student of books on the game, and was not a professional chess-player. But he bowled over the strongest chess experts in America and Europe like nine-pins. To describe the career of this meteoric phenomenon would be to recount a series of chess victories the like of which was never beheld on this planet. From that day to this, the chess fraternity have cherished the hope that sometime a new Paul Morphy would illuminate the chess horizon. But every time this hope has been dashed. And here is the most singular fact of the business: Paul Morphy, the chess-player, was probably the closest approximation to undisputed supreme genius in a given line that the world has ever seen. True, his specialty was only a game. But Shakespeare was not so assuredly the greatest poet, Raphael not so definitely the noblest of painters, Beethoven not so indubitably the divinity of musicians. Newton not so certainly the first of scientists, Phidias no so surely the chief of sculptors, Napoleon not so undoubtedly the mightiest of soldiers, as Paul Morphy was the greatest of chess players.
So when the uninitiated read in the newspapers that Capablanca is a second Paul Morphy, they will do well not to believe it, for the writer himself doesn't believe it, neither does Capablanca. It is just a pleasant conventionality—a graceful compliment—that is all.
Chess has developed many intellectual wonders, and Capablanca is one of them. But it has only had one Paul Morphy!
Morphy Vindicated 23 Nov 1930, Sun The Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, Ohio) Newspapers.com
“MORPHY VINDICATED.”
“A long while ago Steinitz was holding forth at Simpson's Divan in London for his audience, including among others, Bird and Mackenzie. Steinitz talked of his discoveries in chess, and aired his not unreasonable pride in being a pioneer in unexplored regions. In an unguarded moment he spoke of Morphy as a mere imitator.
“I play my king all over the board; I make him fight. What did Morphy do? He castled. He put his king safely into the corner!”
Mackenzie blew a cloud of smoke and quietly observed: “Not a bad idea, either.”
