"Joshua B. Lilly" wrote in message
...
I have to severely question here what is meant by "strength" if Morphy can
be tossed out there. I wonder if Morphy could even compete against a
modern
2500 player and manage to survive the opening. The answer is,
realistically, probably not.
But if you say, "well give him time to study and book up and all that",
well
then, the greatest chessplayer of all time might potentially have been a
goatherder in central Africa who never even heard of chess.

How can you say that, Joshua? Morphy beat *every single player* in the
world (who was worth playing) except Staunton, who, as everybody who knows
the history will tell you, ducked him. All the worlds best players of the
time....toppled by Morphy. Maybe he just outclassed his opponents so much
that most of his games look like they weren't even worth his time, but you
can hardly disqualify Morphy from the list because he was ahead of his time.
And saying he couldn't "even compete against a modern 2500 player and
manager to survive the opening" is just ridiculous.

Of course, this is all speculation and conjecture, but IMHO, Morphy is
definitely one of the all time greats -- definitely worthy of being in the
top five, if not the top three.

Regards,

Matt