The Courier-Journal Louisville, Kentucky Sunday, October 16, 1887 - Page 18
The Wonderful Powers of Paul Morphy, the Precocious Genius Sun, Oct 16, 1887 – Page 18 · The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) · Newspapers.com
The Wonderful Powers of Paul Morphy, the Precocious Genius
“…The feats of the greatest chess genius that ever lived (let Steinitz argue as he may), Paul Morphy associate blindfold chess play in some degree with precocity. I doubt if among all the records of boy chess players any case can be found more marvelous than that of Morphy, who, at the very beginning of his career, when he was little more than a child, beat his uncle Ernest Morphy, a strong player, and Loewenthal, the Hungarian champion, when only fourteen years old. Many of the stories of precocity at chess relates to boy players who beat those who were not, indeed, boys, but neither were they players; but Paul Morphy beating Loewenthal was quite another affair. Even when Morphy crossed the Atlantic to challenge and defeat all the finest players of Europe, he was barely out of his teens. One after another they met him and retired discomfited, or, like our English Staunton, they compared his chess strength with their own by proxy, as it were, and retired without meeting him.
Now Morphy at the age of thirteen played a strong chess game without sight of the board. Rising step by step to two games, to three, to four, and so on we find him while still in his teens playing twelve games simultaneously blindfolded, and against players to whom the champions of the day could not give more then a pawn and move with safety in a set match. More surprising even than the number of games which Morphy could thus play blindfold at one sitting, was the nature of his play under these seemingly difficult conditions. The brilliancy of the combinations was in most cases matched by their soundness and often by their depth-in the sense of the number of moves over which with lightning rapidity he carried his analysis. A veteran player told me of one of these games which he had carefully examined after it was finished; because he believed that a certain brilliant stroke could be more successfully met than it had been in actual play. "Along every line," he said "but one I found Morphy's strategy sound; but along that line there seemed to me a safe thought difficult defense, resulting in eventual victory over him. I passed an hour or two every evening for a week analyzing the game along this line; and having satisfied myself it was sound, I mentioned the point to Morphy when next I met him. I was for setting up the board to show him what I meant; but he would not suffer me. ‘I remember the game perfectly,’ he said. ‘Your defense is not sound, though it is the best available; you have overlooked a mate in three following the sacrifice of my king bishop after the fifth move of your defense.” My veteran friend looked over the position the same evening and found the case was as Morphy had stated.
Imagine the abnormal brain development in some special, though unknown way, which enabled a boy chess player, ten days after playing a game, which was one of twelve played blindfold, to correct in an instant, and without setting up the position, the result, of ten or twelve hours of analysis of the game by a strong and veteran player!
Richard A. Proctor.
In spite of some certain wee miscreants who spread numerous noxious falsehoods about Paul Morphy, Paul had friends long...
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