..
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 opening is important, but a truly talented player can often come back
from ugly, inferior positions. Remember Steinitz, the manueverer and Lasker,
the "coffeehouse player"?


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.


Nonsense. Anybody with any brains at all living in Central Africa would not
be in the goat-herding business, but would of course, be in the business of
mining diamonds or gold!
A "goat-herder" would need a machine-gun to fend off the hyenas, lions, and
vultures there. And shooting some of these animals is illegal, so a
high-pressure water-canon would be required, along with...but I digress. :-)


But more to the point is that a modern master, when facing old lines which
are no longer even considered because of refutations found (and often
forgotten) long ago, would be in much the same position as Morphy: on his own,
in terra incognita. This is where Morphy would trounce a typical, modern 2500
player.
I don't think a modern 2500 is all that great, apart from having memorized a
lot of *modern* openings theory -- which would do him little good against a
genius like Morphy.



"In a set match, Morphy would beat anybody alive today." -- Fischer


"I would be in a lot of trouble!" -- Defirmian, assessing his chances
against a "teleported" Alekhine