No doubt about it..He would be World Champion as long as he wanted to be.

It's tempting to romanticize Morphy, to agree with one noted authority who wrote "In a set match, he would beat any player living today." But I fear it just isn't true.

Now, this is not meant to denigrate Morphy or his achievements. But chess has moved on. The beautiful attacks would not succeed today; indeed, they wouldn't be allowed to get off the ground.

Yes, Morphy could "force" his openings. Take the Dutch as an example. I think any super-GM would gladly pay Morphy to play the Dutch. There are effective and well-known strategies that were not conceived of until years after Morphy's death. Yes, Morphy could play "his openings", but they wouldn't be the openings he knew.

Now, Morphy was a fast learner who often started slowly in matches before coming on strong. Against Paulsen, the match was even after four games--then Morphy won four in a row. Against Harrwitz, Morphy lost the first two games--then won four in a row. Against Anderssen, he started loss, draw--then five wins in a row.

To me an apt analogy of his feats would be if records would be discovered of a New Orleans boy running a 4 minute mile in 1860 on muddy roads by the Mississippi.

In 1860 the fastest recorded mile time was 4:23.

Now it is 3:43:12 set by Hicham el Guerrouj with two pacemakers to take him through 3 laps.

Could an extremely talented runner from the two centuries ago compete with the Moroccan or similar runners today?

If we were able to invent a time machine and brought Morphy to the present day, this is probably what we would find:

1. His opening theory would be poor;

2. His endgames would be so-so;

3. His combinational skills would still be strong

4. His strategical understanding would be mediocre.

In short - fresh out of the box - he would probably play at below GM strength.

But give him access to a chess library, allow him time to prepare and catch up with chess theory, give him the same training that modern GMs receive, and then I do believe that he would improve. How far? I don't know, but he would be a fearsome opponent for just about anyone if properly prepared.

After all, this was a man who studied hard at University, graduated with the highest honours, and - so we are told - memorised the entire Louisiana code of laws. He was qualified to practise law before he was old enough to do so - no mean feat.

If he did he would only prove PT Barnum was right!

A Dutch game with Morphy would be "out of book" very quickly and the "super-GM" would be on his own. It would be talent vs talent and Morphy would win the vast majority of the time.

I'd like to think so, I really would, but I just can't see it happening like that.

A time-warped Morphy would have a lot of catching up to do. Sure, his open game technique would be good, but any GM who really wanted to win would steer the game into positions that Morphy would not understand. That means meeting 1. e4 with the French or Caro Kann or even the Modern. It means closed games and hypermodern strategy.

Morphy was no stranger to closed games and hypermodern strategy. Take a look at the final game of his match with Anderssen:

Morphy vs Anderssen, 1858

Seeing that chess was/is 99% tactics, and Morphy was perhaps one of the greatest tacticians who ever lived ...

I would have to say, give Morphy 3 years (and a coach) to catch up ... and he would hold his own with anyone today.

Years ago, I had little, black notebooks full of Morphy positions (and games), some masters failed to find the correct winning move(s).

Morphy might suffer for a brief period but I'm rather sure his genius was greater than the greatest of the current crop and he would rapidly adjust. Probably he would much rather enjoyed playing opponents that he didn't have to spot a piece too just to make it sporting.

Morphy showed us glimpses of great positional understanding, and endgame technique despite seldom finding it necessary nor having studied at all.

Many young guns have studied and learned chess concepts and stratagies Morphy created them OTB which is simply on another level than most of the thousands of grandmasters alive today, no offence to them or their own skills intended.

I know this is a heated subject and a rather emotional topic for some but his natural talent combined with exposure to the current positional ideas would in my own estimation be a recipe for world champion in any era, and Harrwitz is the perfect example trying to make it a slower more closed game only met with limited short term success.

The players I would have loved to have seen him play were Lasker, Capablanca and maybe Karpov too.

What do you base that on? Because he was a regular polymath and excelled in anything relying on intellect? I never found quotes from his era speaking of him studying chess, if you know of some I'm interested to hear them. No all indications are that he just more completely understood open positions and tempo than anyone before or since, that would include opening a closed position almost at will.

Not saying his mind wasn't resolving and computing off the board, certainly someone who could be blindfolded and come out ahead in a simul against a multitude of strong players of the day could do so. I just don't think there is any indication that he made a systemic study like Steinitz or Nimzowitch did.

At the same place of employment I described in the previous post a very good friend of mine dominated chess there and for some odd reason we had a plethora of solid club worthy players, most of which were in the 1600-1900ish range. My friend could play easily with out view of the board and often he would play on multiple boards and would seldom lose.

With very little study he was in the 2000-2100 range. Ironically he has a natural Morphy like style with every move gaining space and tempo so that you always felt as if you were responding to his ideas. The only time I ever won two consecutive games was after playing over the Evans Gambit games of Morphy.

Anyway I really had a feel for what to do more than based upon concrete calculations. After he left I was considered the strongest player but only by the slimmest of margins but didn't dominate, since I really started in my mid 30's and was by far the rookie not to shabby I suppose. Addicting game with no known cure except insanity ;o]