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"There is no doubt that for Morphy chess was an art, and for chess Morphy was a great artist. His play was captivated by freshness of thought and inexhaustible energy. He played with inspiration, without striving to penetrate into the psychology of the opponent; he played, if one can express it so, "pure chess". His harmonious positional understanding; the pure intuition, would have made Morphy a highly dangerous opponent even for any player of our times." ~ Vassily Smyslov

 

Paul Morphy

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"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... Morphy was perhaps the most accurate chess player who ever lived. He had complete sight of the board and never blundered, in spite of the fact that he played quite rapidly, rarely taking more than five minutes to decide a move. Perhaps his only weakness was in closed games like the Dutch Defense. But even then, he was usually victorious because of his resourcefulness." ~ Bobby Fischer

 

Paul Morphy

 

"[Paul Morphy] just appeared from nowhere and it was only thirty or forty years later that people understood why he was so dominant. His understanding of chess at [that] point was at least forty years ahead of the rest of the world. For the era in which he lived the kind of chess he played was unbelievable." ~ Current World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand, Interview with Shobha Warrier on his ten favorite chess players

 

Paul Morphy

 

"Morphy was the first positional player who, unlike his Romantic rivals, understood the strategic basis for attack. He wrote nothing more than a few game notes and played fewer than seventy-five serious games. But his exploitation of open lines prepared the way for Steinitz's scientific treatment of closed positions and the era of modern chess." ~ Richard Réti

 

Paul Morphy

 

"Genius is a starry word; but if there ever was a chess player to whom that attribute applied, it was Paul Morphy." ~ Andrew Soltis (in Golombek's Encyclopedia of Chess, New York, 1977)

 

Paul Morphy

 

"Reviewing the history of chess from La Bourdonnais to the masters of our day right up to Lasker, we discover that the greatest stylist was Morphy. He did not look for complicated combinations, but he also did not avoid them, which really is the correct way of playing... His main strength lay not in his combinative gift, but in his positional play and general style. Morphy gained most of his wins by playing directly and simply, and it is this simple and logical method that constitutes the true brilliance of his play, if it is considered from the viewpoint of the great masters." ~ José Raúl Capablanca

 

Paul Morphy