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Napoleon Marache vs Paul Morphy
"Two Knight's the Knight" (game of the day Oct-18-09)
New 1857  ·  Italian Game: Evans Gambit. Pierce Defense (C52)  ·  0-1


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Kibitzer's Corner
< Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 3 OF 3 ·  Later Kibitzing >
Dec-07-06   setebos: The Gypsies say to their enemies: "May you have lawsuits and win them" :(
May-18-07   GrandPatzerSCL: Very nice. I think you'd have to be a bit of a jerk to not let your opponent finish with checkmate here. I would have let him do it, I think.
Jun-15-07
Premium Chessgames Member
  verdi: Interesting that Mareche was christened Napoleon and was born 3 days before Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo.
Jun-15-07
Premium Chessgames Member
  fm avari viraf: It's a sheer beauty to see "Knights play havoc" & this time it was the great Morphy who spell disaster with his galloping Knights.
Jul-10-07   leonorasmith: When Paul Morphy plays d5 at the seventh move, i think one might actually read "d6". Thank you.
Nov-14-07
Premium Chessgames Member
  nimh: Rybka 2.4 mp, AMD X2 2.01GHz, 10 min per move, threshold 0.33.

Marache 6 mistakes:
10.Ng5 -1.77 (10.Ba3 -0.73)
15.Ba3 -3.63 (15.Bb4 -2.11)
17.Bf4 -5.85 (17.Qd3 -3.91)
18.Qc2 -7.66 (18.Qe1 -5.90)
19.Qe4 -12.21 (19.Qd3 -7.67)
20.Qxg6 #1 (20.Qxd4 -12.73)

Morphy 1 mistake:
8...Qxd6 -0.74 (8...cxd6 -1.13)

Dec-12-07   wouldpusher: <leonorasmith> <When Paul Morphy plays d5 at the seventh move, i think one might actually read "d6". Thank you.>

7. ... d5 is still correct, and the next move is en passant. Unless I misunderstood your post, in which case I apologize.

Apr-14-08
Premium Chessgames Member
  heuristic: Having won the New York championship the year before, Marache is no patzer. And 7.e5 is his contribution to chess openings! According to the database here, it was introduced with this game. (and it's clear today why it's not played anymore!)

In addition, <nimh/rybka> note that moves 10 and 15 are mistakes. (all later mistakes are insignificant as the game is already lost!). the better alternatives to each are development-related :

7.0-0 dxc3 8.Qb3 Qf6 9.Bg5
10.Ba3 Qf6 11.Bxe7 Qxe7 12.Re1 Be6
15.Bb4 Nh4 16.g3 dxc3 17.Bxc3 Rd8

Also, note that Morphy doesn't choose the strongest move but one that is consistent with his style:

8...Bg4 9.h3 Bh5 10.0-0 cxd6
8...dxc3 9.0-0 cxd6 10.Qb3 Nge7
8...cxd6 9.Nxd4 Qe7+ 10.Be2 Nxd4

are all stronger than
8...Qxd6 9.0-0 Be6 10.Ba3 Qf4

but are inconsistent with his "style" (imho!)

What's instructive about this game is that Morphy shows us how to convert this development advantage into a win (within 4-6 moves!)

< The mastakes come as early as 7. e5?! and move 10.ng5?!. Marache apparently was clueless about the notion of Time in chess. Morphy snatches the innitiative quicker than a robber grabs a purse.>

well, in Marache's defense, this notion was not known then! Morphy was the first to demonstrate this concept and it was not until steinitz & lasker codified it in their publications did it become "common knowledge". (based on my limited understanding of chess history)

there's a reason that botvinnik made his comment about morphy and how he taught the world to play the open game. and this one is a seminal game!

<but when you realize that Morphy had to see that AND the queen trap on the other side of the board to allow the move 14 rook for knight exchange, it's pretty amazing>

but .... from 14 to 18, WHT made 3 significant mistakes. it makes more sense that Morphy's style of development first and attack second, meant that _a_ killer combination was going to be available (soon!). but for Morphy to have calculated a tree of depth 5-7 _and_ with all variations where WHT did NOT make the strongest move is at odds with my limited knowledge of how masters think.

anyway, that's my observation....

May-25-08
Premium Chessgames Member
  FSR: <I have to spout a bit of heresy and say there is nothing impressive about Morphy's play in this game. Personally, I think Morphy's game pretty much played itself, his moves dictated by Marache's terrible play.> You wrote this 150 moves after the game was played. Sure, a modern-day master would have no trouble finding Morphy's moves, but for the time this was brilliant play. btw, Marache was one of the leading players in the country, and played in the 1857 American Chess Congress, Morphy's triumphant first tournament. See my Wikipedia article on Marache at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napole...
Feb-26-09   WhiteRook48: outstanding!
Apr-28-09   copablanco: What Bobby Fischer said about Morphy:
"A popularly held theory about Paul Morphy is that if he returned to the chess world today and play our best contemporaries players, he would come out the loser.Nothing is further from the truth.In a set match, Morphy would beat anybody alive today."
Aug-30-09   TheMacMan: i never understood what the term set match means, someone please explain
Sep-30-09   ughaibu: You appear to be assuming that there exists at least one person who does understand.
Oct-18-09   bengalcat47: Once again Napoleon meets his Waterloo!
Oct-18-09   m0nkee1: The pun is awful ... nice game tho .. looks salvageable with 15 Bb4 as suggested?... after Rd8 looks like Morphys trap is set?...
Oct-18-09   YoungEd: It seems White had the appearance of a good game, but it was only a Marache.
Oct-18-09   manakin: It is quite remarkable that someone's chess envisioning can be such, that a mate threat of this kind is detected by him. The king is seemingly well defended... I am not surprised that even a good player gets mated in one like this, because this mate threat is extremely unpredictable. The psychological effect of moving the knight to g3 is, For white, stressing of the double fork... It must take some long seconds OTB to get it's actually covering white king's escape square, for an attack virtually invented right on that spot.
Oct-18-09
Premium Chessgames Member
  DaveyL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW54...

Tonight's the night. Tonight's the ni-ii-ii-iight....

Oct-18-09
Premium Chessgames Member
  Once: One thing I like about Morphy is that he nearly always seems to be moving forwards. Every move seems to develop a piece or move a piece to a better square.

And with your army better developed and further up the board than the opponents', combinations are bound to appear.

The star move for me here is 11...Bf5. This develops his last minor piece, blocks the b1-h7 diagonal and joins up the black rooks. The drawback is that it allows white the exchange winning tactic of 12. Bxf5 Nxf5 13. Bh3 Qg6 14. Bxf8 Qxg5


click for larger view

White has won the exchange, but just look at the development of the pieces! Black has four pieces in play to white's one. And white is going to have to spend another move to get his Bf8 to safety. Surely the exchange is not worth that amount of black development?

Black's next couple of moves increase his advantage. 15. Ba3 dc! I love this move. It opens the d file for the black rook to harass the white queen and it temporarily entombs the white knight and Ra1. The only safe square for the white knight is on a3, but that is already occupied by white's greedy bishop.

By the time the play spools to 18...Ncd4 we have almost total black domination. His pieces dominate almost every useful square and the white queen has nowhere safe to run to. She has to stay near the Bf4 or e2 to stop Ne2+ from forking king and bishop. 19. Qc1? is clearly rubbish. 19. Qd1 allows 19...c2 forking queen and knight. And 19. Qe4 allows Morphy's pretty queen sac/ knight mate.

And as always, Morphy makes it look so easy... just keep moving forwards....

Oct-18-09   gauer: Weird is that just 2 years later, Mandolfo vs Kolisch, 1859 0-1 had a similar configuration of leaping Knights across the Pawn shield.
Oct-18-09
Premium Chessgames Member
  weisyschwarz: "...ain't nobody's gonna stop Paul now."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h440...

Oct-18-09
Premium Chessgames Member
  JG27Pyth: Napoleon Dynamited!
Oct-18-09   WhiteRook48: some sources say the game ended at 19...Ng3!
Oct-18-09
Premium Chessgames Member
  patzer2: Now 19...Ng3! is a really neat discovered attack!
Oct-19-09
Premium Chessgames Member
  kevin86: An immortal by Morphy-spookingly similar to Marshall's gem a few years later.

KNIGHT MOVES!!! (BTW,a good Movie,starring Christopher Lambert,deals with chess.)

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