Hi Tom Tom.
Some lads go over board when showing Morphy (and Capablanca) games.
I do to the extent that I try to convey the pleasure playing over his
combinations and his free style gives to me.
But you have to point out the flies in the ointment, especially if
they are a instructive and as pretty as the Mate Morphy missed.
Zuckertort and Steinitz point out the missed mates in their writings.
Purdy's notes on this game called Morphy "lazy" adding.
"The careless execution cannot dim the brilliance of the conception."
Rubinstein's kind of shrugs his shoulders by saying who cares:
"I could give a concert with the wrong notes I played."
And so could we all. A win is a win after all.
"A win is a win after all." Nah. If the chance appears you have to play
to the crowd. That was the Morphy (and Tal) way and that is why I'm still baffled
and oh so disapointed (for him as well) why he never played it.
The Worlds Greatest Games of Chess by Burgesss, Emms and Nunn.
Games arranged in order of date. They jump from 1852 to 1883 with no
games in between. If in 1857 PCM had played 23...Rg2 then that game
would have been in there. Leaving it out would have caused a riot.
Infact there are no Mprphy games in that collection, a sad omission,
though his influence is seen often enough.
500 Master Games by Tartakower and Du Mont is still the best collection
of games from the days gone by. great notes, wonderful wonderful games.
Instructive and inspiring. A brilliant chess book.
The Worlds Greatest Games of Chess according to Burgesss, Emms and Nunn.
Is OK, some of the games are just too heavily analysed (Burgess in particuliar
is guilty of this.) The games that Nunn notes up are just about right.
But who ever wrote in the intorduction about the best way
to use the book:
"Alternatively and preferably play over the moves using a suitable
computer program (for example ChessBase).
Keeping a program such a Fritz running in the background will
reveal analytical points we had no space to include in the book."
Wants their head slamming in a door.
Edit:
Missed out a note I wanted to put in re the Paulsen - Morphy game.
Here:
White played the odd looking 16.Ra2.
The idea being to challenge the Queen on d3 with Qc2.
Paulsen most likely dismissed 16.Qa6 because Black has 16...Qc2
and White cannot free himself with d4 because the pawn on c3 hangs.
A case of being good enough to see the consequence of a move
but not being good enough to judge it.
A weaker player would not have seen the Qc2 idea and played Qa6!
(the moral being - don't get good) 😉
Of course he should have played 16.Qa6 right away because giving Morphy
that extra tempo to swing his Rook across to e8 made the Queen sac work.
Here you will see that because White allowed Re8 he cannot play 20.Rg1.
20. Rg1 Rxg1+ followed by Re1 mates.