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| Mar-19-10 |
| funkymihir: great game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11 |
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Mar-20-10
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| jessicafischerqueen: New Chess History Film:
<Paul Morphy: Mozart of Chess-Part three> In this segment Morphy finishes his match with Daniel Harrwitz and plays his famous< Opera House game> against the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard. He receives a challenge from the fearsome German champion Adolf Anderssen, arguably the best chess player in the world since he obliterated Howard Staunton at the great London 1851 Supertournament. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7xa... |
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| Mar-24-10 |
| hotpie79: I am confused. If black moves 15. xd7 instead of 15. xd7 can't he block checkmate? I keep playing it out and can't find a quick mate, though black loses his queen and rook in forced moves. Am I just missing something? |
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| Apr-08-10 |
| sfm: <If black moves 15. Qxd7 instead of 15. Nxd7 can't he block checkmate?>
True, Black then lives longer - but only if you can call 15.-,Qxd7 16.Qb8+,Ke7 17.Qxe5+,Kd8 (17.-,Qe6 18.Qc7+ leads to instant mate) 18.Bxf6+,gxf6 19.Qxf6+ and 20.RxQ and 21.QxR for "a life"! :-) |
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Apr-11-10
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| thegoodanarchist: The lesson to be learned here, among others, is develop your pieces. White has developed his, and sacrificed some of them, while the Black king's bishop and rook are still at home as their king gets checkmated. Beautiful play by PM. |
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May-25-10
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| sisyphus: IM Bill Hartston annotates this in his "Kings of Chess." After 7...Qe7 he writes
<Most players, ancient or modern, would probably have settled for the win of a pawn with 8 Qxb7 Qb4+ 0 Qxb4 Bxb4+ 10 c3 etc., but Morphy goes straight for the kill.> (As Honza Cervenka points out, 8.Bxf7+! wins at least two pawns, whatever Black does.) |
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| Jul-07-10 |
| Petrosianic: <great game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11> "I couldn't be bothered to make any specific comment about it, capitalize any words, or even keep the shift key held down for all of the exclamation points, but I did enjoy it in a very vague, lackadaisacal and non-specific way." High praise indeed. :) |
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| Jul-07-10 |
| Petrosianic: 3...Bg4 is a weak move, but 6...Nf6 (which has no annotation) is worse, and is the losing move. <IM Bill Hartston annotates this in his "Kings of Chess." After 7...Qe7 he writes <Most players, ancient or modern, would probably have settled for the win of a pawn with 8 Qxb7 Qb4+ 0 Qxb4 Bxb4+ 10 c3 etc., but Morphy goes straight for the kill.> This is the one Morphy move in the game that I'm not sure about, and I've seen various annotators seem to talk around it in this way. There was one guy (I don't remember which; this game has been published how many thousands of times?) in which the annotator explained that White could have played 8. Qxb7, but that "that would have been the actions of a butcher, rather than an artist." Of course, the game is great art only after we've seen the ending. The question the annotators are talking around is whether or not 8. Qxb7, boring and brutal as it is, is in fact the best move. If it is, then Morphy made one less-than-best move in this masterpiece. Was a brilliant sacrificial victory really in the works even before Black obligingly played 9...b5, or was Morphy going easy on his opponents on Move 8? After 8...b6, Black is probably still lost, true, but at least he should be able to hang on until Move 20 or 30. Or maybe he wasn't "going easy", maybe he was simply counting on further errors from his inexperienced opponents. A good gamble, to be sure, but the question still remains: Is 8. Nc3 objectively the best move, or isn't it? |
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| Jul-07-10 |
| eric the Baptist: This is the most brutal attacking game I've ever seen. The count never got his feet under him. |
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| Jul-07-10 |
| Petrosianic: What were some of the runners up? |
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| Jul-07-10 |
| Petrosianic: <The question the annotators are talking around is whether or not 8. Qxb7, boring and brutal as it is, is in fact the best move.> Or rather, 8. Bxf7+, since that seems to be stronger than 8. Qxb7, which allows 8...Qb4+, and Black gets the Queens off while losing only a pawn. Objectively I suspect that this is the case, that Morphy played a less than best move, either because he was going easy or because he was gambling on further mistakes, and that annotators have traditionally talked around the issue, to avoid admitting White's play to have been less than perfect. |
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Jul-07-10
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| keypusher: <IM Bill Hartston annotates this in his "Kings of Chess." After 7...Qe7 he writes <Most players, ancient or modern, would probably have settled for the win of a pawn with 8 Qxb7 Qb4+ 0 Qxb4 Bxb4+ 10 c3 etc., but Morphy goes straight for the kill.>> This Hartson dude makes one idiotic comment after another about famous games. Morphy was playing a consultation game against a pair of quarrelsome patzers at an opera house. His main preoccupation (per Edge) was winning in a hurry so that the Duke and the Count would shut up and he could listen to the music. Under such circumstances any master would <go straight for the kill>. Whether he could it with Morphy's style and verve is another question. |
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| Jul-07-10 |
| savagerules: I bet Morphy used only about 5 minutes of his own thinking time in this game, while the Clown Duke and the Count probably used up half the opera time on their patzer moves.
This is the game where someone said of Morphy, he's an artist not a butcher on his choice of winning methods. |
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| Jul-08-10 |
| Petrosianic: If keypusher is right, being an artist was the farthest thing from his mind, he just wanted to end the game as quickly as possible. Do we really know anything about the personalities of the Duke and Count? I've always been distrustful about the details of mythical games (as this one certainly is), because it seems that everyone wants to write part of the myth themselves (Morphy used 5 minutes, the others used half the opera, et cetera). Except for the moves themselves, the details tend to get buried The butcher comment was discussed yesterday, and I still think it was made to gloss over the fact that Morphy's 8th move was not objectively best (not that that really matters in a skittles game). |
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Jul-08-10
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| keypusher: <Petrosianic: If keypusher is right, being an artist was the farthest thing from his mind, he just wanted to end the game as quickly as possible.> I don't think being an artist was ever entirely absent from Morphy's mind, especially in casual encounters. Here he wanted brevity and artistry both, and gave us a game for all time. As I recall SBC had a bio of the Duke, but my link to her site doesn't work. (Does anyone have a working link?) I believe it says in Edge that the Duke and the Count were quarreling over every move and that Morphy <wished chess at Pluto>. |
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| Jul-08-10 |
| Petrosianic: Maybe a consultation game wasn't that great an idea. Neither one had a chance against Morphy separately, and arguing could only have made it worse. A more interesting idea for a challenge might have been to play two separate games, and see which one of them could last against Morphy longer, with Paul going for the quickest possible kill in each game, and playing to checkmate. If the object of the game is to mate as quickly as possible, then 8. Nc3 probably really is better than 8. Bxf7+. I wonder why we've never seen a challenge like that. |
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| Jul-08-10 |
| MaczynskiPratten: <Petrosianic>: we have. It's called a simultaneous display :-) |
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| Jul-08-10 |
| Petrosianic: I've never seen a simultaneous exhibition in which they counted moves to see who could last the longest. Usually in those the winners are the ones who are actually able to beat the exhibitor. |
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Aug-04-10
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| LIFE Master AJ: http://www.ajschess.com/lifemastera... My sites at GC hve all been closed, "A.J.'s Chess" is a new domain. This analysis won a CJA award on 1999. (Best analysis in a stet magazine.) |
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Aug-04-10
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| LIFE Master AJ: <Petr...>
I think with Nc3, Morphy was playing according to the principles that he must have already formulated in his own mind, i.e. that development in the opening takes precedence over grabbing material. |
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Aug-04-10
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| LIFE Master AJ: ... state magazine.
Sorry, I was really tired when I typed this. |
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Aug-23-10
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| jackpawn: < I think with Nc3, Morphy was playing according to the principles that he must have already formulated in his own mind, i.e. that development in the opening takes precedence over grabbing material.> I agree AJ. I'm no Morphy (obviously!), but my first inclination would be to develop a piece too. |
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Aug-23-10
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| Marmot PFL: Against a stronger player taking an extra pawn into the ending would be tempting, but Morphy would hardly settle for that in a casual game against these amateurs. |
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Aug-25-10
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| GrahamClayton: Here is a 1933 newsreel showing a living chess version of this game: http://www.britishpathe.com/record.... |
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Aug-30-10
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| ketchuplover: The Duke speaks out!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ab... |
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