"How can you say that, Joshua?"

Uh, by looking at the openings he played? What more do you need?
Whether or not he`s one of the all-time GREATS is another matter entirely,
and I agree with that. And one of the strongest ever with relation to his
contemporaries. But in terms of actual, applicable strength, he would
simply not stack up against modern GMs. He`d get inferior or losing
positions in the opening, and all the combinational and calculation skills
in the world just don`t come into play from losing positions. He actually
thought the "modern position" (in the Evans Gambit) with Anderrsen`s d5 for
White was good. And you think this sort of play would stack up against,
say, Kramnik HOW exactly?
The opponents crushed by Morphy were strong by the standards of that time,
but your position is that chess has not advanced. I think anyone can look
at chess over the past 50 years and see clearly that it has advanced. If
Morphy could compete against modern GMs, that would mean that chess had
completely stagnated since the 1850s. Do you honestly believe that is the
case?




"Matt Nemmers" wrote in message
news:w_EGc.1635$WX.120@attbi_s51...

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