Paul Morphy and the Evolution of Chess Theory (Dover Chess)

Being only a beginner myself, what can I really say? One of the main nuggets I gleaned from this book is a deeper understanding of the development of pieces in relationship to opening time. I also looked at Morphy's treatment of the French which Kasparov also apparently looked at (which is obviously why I looked too...). Morphy always plays e4e5 with black, also plays Dutch quite often. With white he's the open game ace but can you apply his technique from a bygone era to your game today??? I think you can because the list of greats who already did fill the pages of this book: Fischer, Reti, Marcozy, Alekhine, Kasparov... I find these games inspirational. Hundreds of games, so little time.

This was a great book for the dedicated chess player! My husband loves it!

BACKGROUND: In the past few years, I've gone from being nothing more than a very casual online correspondence chess player to one who is now playing in USCF-rated tournaments. My current (though still provisional) USCF 'slow' rating is in the 2000s; "actual" playing strength probably in the 1800-2000 range. Played my share of 1|0,3|0 and 5|0 blitz against players ranging from Class E to Expert (and even one master). I've finished around 20 chess books, and half-finished dozens of others (similar to most 'serious' chess players I reckon). Done loads of tactics problems. Gone through dozens of annotated master games. Etc. Suffice it to say that while there are still far better chess players on this Earth than me, compared to the average club player, I'm not a complete slouch either. In other words, I have some idea of what passes for good chess literature and what doesn't.REVIEW: Basically this is a game collection book, with a particular emphasis (not surprisingly) on Paul Morphy. This book aims to be as objective as possible in discussing Morphy's games and his legacy as a whole, often dispelling the exaggerated mystique surrounding the Morphy legend. For example, it disproves Fischer's statement that Morphy "never" blundered (the 'Blunders and Omissions' chapter); rectifies Philip Sergeant's comment that "in nothing was Morphy so fortunate as the frequency with which his opponents played P-R3 [i.e. h3 or h6]" since "Morphy himself was more apt to play this move than would be a modern master" (pg. 9); that Morphy opted for the Dutch Defense against 1.d4 because he feared the line 1.d4,d5 2.c4,e6 3.Nc3,Nf6 4.Bf4 for black since an impending Nb5 by white would "attack" c7 (pg. 111); and how Morphy most definitely was NOT the first chess player to appreciate the value of a lead in development ('Paul Morphy and the Play of Our Time' chapter).In sum, this book tries to depict a realistic image of Paul Morphy as a player: his actual strengths, his oversights, his human side, etc.Also worth noting is how this book includes a section on Morphy's selected endgames, openings, and games with material odds. It even embarks on giving basic strategic advice for how to play the opening if you're giving pawn and move odds to your opponent. Neat!COMPLAINTS:1.) Capture marks ("x") and check symbols ("+") do not appear in ANY of the printed game scores in this book. A most egregious decision in my view, and enough to deduct an entire star from this review. There's no apparent benefit to this and it makes trying to go through the games (or the side analysis) without a board that much harder. I seriously was annoyed enough by this that I re-wrote the moves in my book with these marks where they should be.2.) Pages 179 to 296 and 338 to 349 are merely unannotated game scores. So while, yes, this book does technically contain hundreds of Paul Morphy's games, THE VAST MAJORITY OF THEM ARE NOT ANNOTATED! These large sections will likely prove completely useless to readers with enough computer memory and a penchant for databases.3.) What this book has in quality annotations, it somewhat lacks in quantity of them.4.) A small portion of the book space goes over games that Morphy did NOT play. While most of these are designed to prove a point about Morphy as a player, the games are arguably unnecessary additions.5.) Most of the games that are annotated aren't Morphy's most famous 'brilliant' wins...no annotations for his famous 'Opera House' game, for example. So anyone looking for such a thing should look elsewhere.CONCLUSION: Overall, this book is decent. Its annotations appear to be pretty good, its down-to-Earth view of Morphy is refreshing, and at many points it shines through with originality.On the other hand, much of this "originality" will rightfully be considered filler material, even if much of it IS cool.The book's worst flaws are its unacceptable neglect of capture and check marks in the printed game scores, the pages of unannotated game scores that will prove useless to many, and its somewhat disorganized layout.So while I do NOT recommend this book to those still fairly new to chess books or chess notation in general, I DO (cautiously) recommend this to any aspiring player with a reasonable amount of prior book experience.3.5/5.

This book has 400 games of his/can't remember exact number,but if you want to study his playing style and the style of chess play during his time,this is an excellant book.

Excellent book for tactics. My son learning the how to make sacrifices to achieve the goal by looking and understanding each and every move. I recommend this book for people who wants to learn tactics.

the father of modern ches ,genius i happy to have this book in my collection i recommeded i love it

excellent

Thanks to a recent gift from two of my Internet students, I just received this book a few days ago. (Thanks guys!) However, I did not need much introduction to this book, as I already owned the original hard-back edition as well.Paul Morphy was one of the greatest players who ever lived, statistically he dominated his generation in a fashion that Bobby Fischer or Garry Kasparov cannot touch.This is a great book, probably one of the most carefully written books on Morphy that you will find. It has OVER 400 games played by Morphy. All of his serious tournament and match games, as well as other games as well. (Games at odds, simultaneous games, blindfold games, etc.)Many of the games are carefully annotated, the author did a wonderful job here. Many of the mistakes that were made in earlier books are caught and corrected.This is NOT the ultimate biography on Morphy, it concentrates almost exclusively on Morphy's chess. (Chapters on Morphy's Openings, Morphy's Endings, etc.) And while I do not agree with every conclusion that the author reached, I do think that this is a LAND-MARK book ... and one that fully deserved to be reprinted.A few flaws, there are some obvious typo's in here. The diagrams in the Dover edition are not as clear as in the original hard-back book. Some of the pages have a grainy feel to them, a few pages in my book were not cut correctly and are slightly skewed.Overall, I give this book 4 stars. If you want to get better, you HAVE to study Morphy's tactics. This is the book to do it with. I highly recommend this book, despite the publisher's flaws. (All the older books on Morphy were in English Standard Descriptive Notation, this is one of the only books on Morphy in algebraic.)

There is a myth about Morphy, begun in his lifetime and accepted uncriticially by most chess players in the years after his retirement and untimely death. [An exception to the believers was Steinitz, and his account of Morphy is included in Shibut's book].The fanciful myth was written into history by Reti in "Masters of the Chess Board". It is that Morphy:1) Never blundered,2) Won most of his games by sacrificial combinations,3) Discovered the principle of rapid developmentWrong on all three counts. Shibut has gone to the trouble of finding every available game by Morphy, and some little known (or hard to find) articles about him from the 1800's. When you look at his competition games (rather than offhand games and exhibition games) it turns out that he (1) blundered often enough and (2) won most of his games by attrition (winning material) just as do most modern masters.As for (3), discovering rapid development, that has always been nonsense. All the players of the time understood the idea, even if they occasionally went against it, because they thought they had encountered an exception. However, in return we se that Morphy understood positional principles that the standard, simplified (i.e. nonsense) history of chess tells us were not "discovered" until much later. He was the strongest player of his time, but NOT because he had some secret insight into chess principles. He was stronger for the same reasons that any modern player is strong. He saw or found better moves than his opponents, he played the endgame well, his openings were better prepared, he blundered less often than his opponents, and he fought hard, whether he stood well or badly.Shibut demonstrates that Morphy was indeed a very great player, but not for the reasons generally believed. His book also shows that 19th century chess was already of a very high standard. Those masters in the 1800's would have had little trouble defeating today's strong amateurs and, despite their lack of modern opening and endgame knowledge, would be no pushovers for today's masters and GMs.This is a great book, and a very enjoyable read. It might even improve your chess! The only criticism I have is that many of the games have no annotations, which makes them hard to understand for the average player. It would have been even better if Mr. Shibut had annotated all the games, or employed a stronger chess master than himself to provide some notes to those bare scores.

Great book

un libro di 359 pagine che incorpora un fascicoletto chiamato addendum in cui nella prima versione del libro era inserito a parte perche il libro era gia stato terminato che contiene partite inedite che non sono presenti in molti libri in piu' sono stati inseriti altri 2 capitoli.Una 1 parte e dedicata ad alcune partite commentate con confronti con altri gioctori ,una seconda parte dedicata a tutte le partite circa 500 ,una terza parte con i due capitoli aggiunti piu' l'addendum ecc .un libro veramente ottimo,rispetto alla prima edizione e piu'aggiornato ma e' in edizione economica copertica in cartoncino rispetto alla prima edizione rilegata in tela ma il prezzo e decisamente inferiori rispetto alla prima edizione 55 euro ormai molto rara ,consigliatissimo questo libro su morphy ,penso uno dei migliori dal punto di vista del numero di partite ,anche se come tutti i libri su Morphy alcune date non sono corrette ed alcuni giocatori rimangono anonimi,secondo le mie lunghe ricerche che faccio da anni su Morphy.Consigliatissimo.

Studying all the games of Morphy intensely is a must for improvement the bulk of the game scores in part 2 of Shibut's book comes from Geza Marcozy's book Paul Morphy published in 1909 it has many corrections and additions Maróczy‎'s book is highly recommended reading it's a special book and was a labor of love for him the way he talks in the book it's like he's in total awe of Morphy and has deep respect for him.

The time and research to write this book boggles the mind. It is a biography like no other and a great homage to probably the best chess player ever.