Author: rich
Date: 10:43:16 03/05/99
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That's right, Morphy did crush Anderssen ! Just think about these few things: 1.Back then "opening theory"virtually didn't exist(at least in Morphy's head) No "play the sicilian as black and spring a new idea at move 35 that you have already analyzed at home" a la Kaspy style. Morphy played on intuition, and more than often his intuition was correct. 2.despite having no chess clocks Morphy was a fast player:I know of a game where he sacrifices his queen, using only ten minutes of thought.his opponent used 2 hours before accepting the sac. 3.People often say Morphy was a tactical genuis.True , but anderssen was just as strong tactically.Morphy was in a weird sense ahead of his time strategically. 4.The amount of games being small DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL since back then players avoided draws at all costs,the main objective was to play a brilliancie with one side losing miserably and the other side winning spectacularly with some piece sacrifices.Players who drew a lot of games were disliked, almost hated 5.This might sound revolutionary, but here it goes:I think Morphy deliberately made minor positional mistakes AGAINST WEAKER OPPONENTS (bold attacking moves in the opening)because he knew that they would not realize how to exploit, and this would give morphy a fast tactical win, explaining the misconception of Morphy as a tactical player. So ? So this means that he played THE MAN AND NOT THE BOARD !!!! Therefor I think Morphys goal was simply to win, and not to win brilliantly like anderssen.
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