With a lot of thanks to Jack Goossens, Amsterdam, I can now offer the
first comprehensive and computerized Morphy game collection. morphy.pgn
contains all of Morphy's surviving 415 games - 253 regular games, 156
odds games, and 6 game positions - in the chronological order of the standard
works by Maroczy (1909) and Sergeant (1916, 1930). In a separate gamefile,
pmorphy.pgn, are Morphy's 59 games from what we would consider serious
events now: the tournament in New York (1857) and the matches against Löwenthal,
Harrwitz, Anderssen (1858) and Mongredien (1859). Morphy's combined score
in these games was +42 =9 -8.
If you have a Java-enabled browser, and some patience,
you can view these 59 games (the default), or all of the 415 games on line
with the PGN-viewer below. Click the small window
if you want to change files.
You can also download the zip-files. I do not know
how the 'FEN-notation' (for the odds games and the game positions) will
behave with all the different chess databases and converting programs,
and you may have to edit the morphy.pgn file before you can use
it. It's a simple text file, but be sure to save it as plain ASCII.
Download pmorphy.zip (59 official games)
Download morphy.zip (all 415 games)
Playing over those games, one gets the impression that Morphy, in contrast
to his contemporaries, understood chess. He played natural moves
and saw very clearly, and that alone put him in a class by himself. If
many games seem silly, he had poor opponents. In his whole life, he didn't
play more than 20 or 30 games against players worthy of him. If only he
could have played Pillsbury, Tarrasch, Steinitz, Lasker...
Where to put him in history? Among the greats, on
a par with Lasker and Capablanca. Morphy was better than Anderssen, who
held his own against Steinitz - who won games against Lasker when he was
almost 60, and Lasker not yet 30. And Morphy was a year younger than Steinitz!
Had circumstances permitted him to devote himself to chess, he would have
been World Champion until Tarrasch or Lasker beat him.
In Hastings 1895, at 58, he would have celebrated
his last, great victory, ahead of all the young dogs.
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