Fortunately there's Mr. Staunton, who writes: "This we take to be his best resource. If, instead of attacking the Queen, he had played away his KN, the attack would have been overpowering."

That seems conclusive, coming from "the most profound opening analyst of all time". Still, suppose black had been foolish enough to play 12... Ng4

click for larger view

why lose time for harassing this poor little horse at g4, which I guess did never bite you? Why not rather let your own horse on b1 which is just boring at home and doing nothing, run a bit outside, starting from 13.Nbd2 for example?

Maybe the result at last would be better for White...

In general, I have the feeling that before Lasker "came", the Evans gambit was a terrible weapon in the hands of his knowers.

Without the aid of a solid body of theory even pretty astute players often fell victim to early opening traps, and at the other end came to flawed conclusions about (particularly deeper) endgames. Championship tier players were largely what would be considered but a strong amateur now. I actually think most of us would stand a very good chance against even Morphy at standard time controls (maybe even at rapid, although my feeling is we'd probably struggle at blitz).

"A popularly held theory about Paul Morphy is that if he returned to the chess world today and played our best contemporary players, he would come out the loser. Nothing is further from the truth. In a set match, Morphy would beat anybody alive today."

In other words, Morphy has his talents, but his modern opponent gets to have the aid of current theory, while Morphy has to make do with what foreknowledge was available in the 1850s-60s.

If both players had access to modern theory then I would have much more confidence in Morphy's chances, but I expect that this "theory odds" would equalize things considerably - especially when it is also considered that Morphy was almost entirely an e4 player and as a result, nowadays he would be facing the Sicilian at an alarmingly frequent rate, an often very sharp opening where theory has been analyzed out to 20 or more moves in many variations, and where even small deviations from the rote path have a strong tendency to end gruesomely for the transgressor (heck, I myself pretty much entirely shy away from 1 e4 except against the most casual of opponents for exactly this reason).

Staunton likely rates to fare much better under similar circumstances, if nothing else because he tended to play the closed openings much more frequently, where exacting knowledge of theory is of much less gravitas (the fact that so many of the closed openings practically transpose into one another - especially the massive complex that basically all merge into the KID after a few moves - is heavily illustrative of that). Also Staunton was much more of a theory-oriented player to begin with and therefore likely would adapt much better to the 21st century chess world than Morphy (or even say early Capablanca, who Reinfeld noted as "not being familiar with the customary lines" when commenting on one of his most immortal 1909 QGD victories against Marshall).

Man someone should really feed a neural net all Morphy games and create a bot out of it just to end all these tedious discussions about "Morphy/Fischer/Capablanca/<insert your favourite player>" today. (That bot would of course be much worse than Morphy.)

Personally, I am skeptical that "most of us" would beat these guys today (define "us"). I think these guys just had a rare natural chess intuition and ability to compute ("genius") that very few people possess, even after years of study and play. Their brains just seem to be made for chess. Even without tons of theory, I think they would be on a strong master level today. For other 19th century greats, I'm not so sure. Yes, Staunton had moments of greatness, but his chess mostly feels more like the result of hard work.

But again, all this is just my personal speculation, and I usually keep these opinions to myself because I find these kind of discussions rather pointless and boring because they usually lead to bickering and people feeling offended because you don't idolize the same idols as they idolize.

<Theory is ever a double edged sword. It's interesting to learn, but there is a truism that game players in general come to understand: people will optimize the fun out of anything.>

I agree, these 'how would Morphy do today" discussions are pointless and the only good thing about them are people look again at a few Morphy games. But I'll join in.

You asked for a definition of 'most of us.' and how we would play v Morphy. (I know you said 'these guys' but let's stay with Morphy.)

We are players who have played over and learned from Morphy games. These games have been used by writers and coaches to explain where his opponents went wrong and made us better players.

I do not think he would bowl anyone rated 1800-2300 over as easy as he appeared to do against the 1850/1860 amateurs. Thanks to his games teaching us we would do a lot better and make him work harder for his wins.

He would still be winning the majority v the 1800-2300 crowd because Morphy's games contain very few mistakes. His blunder ratio was very low. Lower than the 1800-2300 crowd.

Over 2300 (which takes out most of us.) I fear he may toil to win games, especially as Black v anything other than 1.e4. A lot of draws as he would be very difficult to beat.

This is based on the very little we know about him playing against 1.d4, 1.c4 1.Nf3. If you look at his page Paul Morphy and what he played 'With the Black Pieces' there no mention of any openings other than him facing 1.e4. He did face a few 1.d4's but there is not enough data to warrant an opinion, only guess work, which is basically what I'm doing.

And Morphy playing 1.e4 against today's booked up players playing semi-open and closed systems would see him going into level middle games that did not suit his style.

thanks for your insightful comment! I really don't mind this kind of fact-based speculation, on the contrary; what I find unnerving is this rather childish "Waaah, my hero is better than your hero" thingy.

I think I'd agree to your assessment. Intuitively I would also place Morphy at around 2300-2400. Then I remembered that a few years ago chess.com introduced their CAPS (Computer-Aggregated Precision Score) rating and used it to compute the ELO of world champions based on their accuracy (they got a lot of flak for it because the perceived blasphemy against St. Elo), and this resulted in an ELO equivalent of 2409 for Morphy (https://www.chess.com/article/view/...). Spot on! However, it still is pure speculation how a booked-up Morphy would fare against today's top players, because that would depend on his memory and how dedicated he was at doing actual work (and from what I've read the latter may not have been his forte).

What I found really interesting is the opening thing you mentioned. I checked the database and saw that 1.d4 was tried against him only eight times, no 1.c4 and four "irregular" openings (https://www.chessgames.com/perl/che...). Against 1.d4 he at first played a QGD three times with an even (!) score (+1-1=1) before switching to the Dutch with the usual results (+4-0=1). The QGD loss is Harrwitz vs Morphy, 1858 and in Loewenthal's annotations it says that he switched to the Dutch after this game because he realized he couldn't handle these closed positions so well, so we see that he was quick to learn from his openings, choosing those who fit his style. Then there's of course Anderssen's famous 1.a3 which also turned out even. One guy tried 1.h3 and got crushed.

Of course one may argue that players who chose something else than 1.e4 were probably not your average amateur, but from the little data we have, it definitively looks like he'd have trouble with a more positional playing style.

This is the essence of greatness in many things: intelligence, flexibility, adaptability.

<....Of course one may argue that players who chose something else than 1.e4 were probably not your average amateur, but from the little data we have, it definitively looks like (Morphy would) have trouble with a more positional playing style....>

I think he would, in time, adapt to handle the close and semi closed positions. (he would have too).

I'd say (again 100% pure guesswork - but good fun) when facing 1.d4 from the good guys he would start off with The Albin Counter Gambit, The Budapest and the Benko (although in this case it would mean he would have to fianchetto his KB which he never did unless giving pawn odds.)

Karpov too was very shy about fianchettoing his KB. During his golden years 1973-1987 you find he only did it as Black v closed Sicilians and The English and there are a lot of short draws. Karpov never played a King's Indian during that time and you will struggle to find Karpov as Black playing a K.I.D. at any time during is career.

Thinking about it ( as I type this) If Morphy popped up today he would go through his gambit phase as Black, find it OK but not too successful so switch to a Karpovian style.

Again due to Morphy's low blunder rate he could handle adopting a Karpov style and nicking Karpov's opening repertoire. (Steinitz rated Morphy's positional sense very highly so the seeds are there.)

No gambits as White but playing to score points positionally. equalising as Black (again no gambits) and then seeing if it could be converted a win and punishing any player who was White over pressing against him. If tactics reared it's ugly head Morphy would not be found wanting in that department.

I'm lifting him from a good player to the top 20. At the moment I have today's Morphy as a poor man's Karpov. Give me a week and I'll find a reason to make him the GOAT.

No seriously, your Morphy/Karpov comparison is fascinating, but here we're definitively entering the Realm of Pure and Unadulterated Speculation... I don't like fianchettoing my KB either but I'm no Karpov -- hell I'm pretty sure not even a Morphy! (I've slowly reached 1200 on chess.com. In the past weeks I had several winning positions against 1500ers but my biggest weakness is A) now knowing how to convert an advantage and B) stupidly giving away my queen. Well I've never been good with women.)

I'm not saying Morphy wouldn't have been able to play well positionally. I'm just not sure he would have liked playing this way. And I do think that for Morphy that made a difference.