Paul Morphy - Playing Style

Playing Style

Today many amateurs think of Morphy as a dazzling combinative player, who excelled in sacrificing his queen and checkmating his opponent a few brilliant moves later. One reason for this impression is that chess books like to reprint his flashy games. There are games where he did do this, but it was not the basis of his chess style. In fact, the masters of his day considered his style to be on the conservative side compared to some of the flashy older masters like La Bourdonnais and Anderssen.

Morphy can be considered the first modern player. Some of his games do not look modern because he did not need the sort of slow positional systems that modern grandmasters use, or that Staunton, Paulsen, and later Steinitz developed. His opponents had not yet mastered the open game, so he played it against them and he preferred open positions because they brought quick success. He played open games almost to perfection, but he also could handle any sort of position, having a complete grasp of chess that was years ahead of his time. Morphy was a player who intuitively knew what was best, and in this regard he has been likened to Capablanca. He was, like Capablanca, a child prodigy; he played quickly and he was hard to beat. In an era before time control was used, Morphy often took less than an hour to make all of his moves, while his opponents would need perhaps 8 hours or more. Löwenthal and Anderssen both later remarked that he was indeed hard to beat since he knew how to defend and would draw or even win games despite getting into bad positions. At the same time, he was deadly when given a promising position. Anderssen especially commented on this, saying that after one bad move against Morphy one might as well resign. "I win my games in seventy moves but Mr. Morphy wins his in twenty, but that is only natural..." Anderssen said, explaining his poor results against Morphy.

Of Morphy's 59 "serious" games—those played in matches and the 1857 New York tournament—he won 42, drew 9, and lost 8.

Former World Champion Bobby Fischer, noting that "Morphy and Capablanca had enormous talent", stated further that Morphy had the talent to beat any player of any era if "given time to study modern theory and ideas". Some commentators disagree, including American GM Reuben Fine, who wrote that "if we examine Morphy's record and games critically, we cannot justify such extravaganza", and British GM Raymond Keene.