Paul Morphy, in a strange prefiguration of the later career of Bobby Fischer, was often described as ‘the pride and sorrow of chess’. In the late 1850s he blazed like a meteor across the chess firmament. He sprang to prominence by thoroughly defeating the German master Louis Paulsen in the New York tournament of 1857. Based on this success, Morphy travelled to Europe where, in quick succession, he inflicted match defeats on the established European masters such as Lowenthal, Harrwitz and finally Adolf Anderssen, who was very much regarded as champion after his victory at the London tournament of 1851.
Morphy’s victories were so great that we tend to regard him as a titan of chess, but this week’s game shows that he was also human. The notes also suggest that the accepted version of the latter part of the game, where Morphy appears to lose the thread completely but goes unpunished, may be down to a single misprint which has been repeated in all subsequent anthologies of Morphy’s games.
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