June 6, 2011 • 18 mins
Bobby Fischer called Paul Morphy "the greatest chess genius in history," By age 20, he earned recognition as America's best player after winning the nation's first chess championship tournament in 1857. So why did his career end after only two years?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a chocolate boarding and I'm fair and
I have been knee deep in chess research this week,
of all things, inspired by a listener named Brandon who
(00:22):
is an avid chess player, and he wanted a podcast
about chess, anything to do with chess. He didn't really
seem too picky about what the exact topic was, as
long as it was chess related. Of course, in his email,
Bobby Fisher's name did come up. And when you start
researching the greatest chess players of all time, all signs
do kind of point to him. Even if you don't
know anything about chess, you know Bobby Fisher exactly. After all,
(00:46):
he did become the youngest grandmaster in history at age
fifteen and nineteen fifty eight, and he's also the first
native born American to hold the title of world champion
in nineteen seventy two. But what really sparked our interest
is that chess prodige you the Bobby Fisher. It was
there was someone else that Fisher himself referred to as
the greatest chess genius in history. And that was another American,
(01:08):
a New Orleans native named Paul Morphy. Yeah, and like Fisher,
Morphy was kind of a child prodigy, and he had
made his mark on chess at a very early age,
of surprisingly early age. And he also completely went against
the old ways of playing chess, which is what really
made him stand out, and it's what I found really
interesting about this subject. But strangely, his illustrious chess career
(01:31):
only lasted two years, something that makes him even more
amazing that he had such an impact, such an effect
in so short a span of time. Yeah, just when
he seemed poised to do bigger and better things, he
sort of faded into obscurity. So it was kind of strange.
Nowadays only aficionados know much about him, even though in
the day he was really well known to people even
(01:53):
outside of the chess community, the Bobby Fisher of his day, right,
So we want to look into that mystery a little bit.
What's the real story behind why Morphy abandoned chess so
abruptly even though he was so well suited for it,
so good at it, And why is he called the
Pride and Sorrow of Chess the title of our podcast.
But Of course, before we get into all of that,
we need to talk about how Paul Morphy got into
(02:16):
chess in the first place, because New Orleans is not
really known as being the center of the American chess scene,
or it certainly wasn't back in eight thirty seven June
two when he was born, and his family wasn't the
type that would drive their son into some sort of
professional chess career either. His father, Alonzo Morphy, was a
(02:37):
successful lawyer and he served in the Louisiana House of
Representatives and later went on to become the state's Attorney
general and serve on its Supreme Court. Well. His mother
was this prominent member of the New Orleans Creole society,
so his family was very wealthy, they were influential. He
seemed more destined for a career as a lawyer, not
a chess player, and that's exactly what his family, especially
(02:59):
his move or, really wanted him to do. Chess was
always kind of in the background of this, though. His
father and grandfathers taught Paul how to play, and Paul's uncle,
Ernest Morphy played and was also a pretty well known
chess analyst of the time, but by around age nine,
Paul had his own sort of reputation. He had a
local reputation as an accomplished player, and by age twelve,
(03:21):
he was considered New Orleans strongest player. Yeah, but his
greatest feeder. His first great feat came in eighteen fifty.
He had just turned thirteen and he played a three
game match against the Hungarian chess master janos Ja Lowenthal.
And this guy was considered to be one of the best,
one of the top ten players in the world, and
(03:41):
this little thirteen year old kid defeated him in all
three games, and it was just an amazing feat for
the chess world at the time. But between eighteen fifty
and eighteen fifty seven, Paul actually took a little break
from chess. He went to spring Hill College in Mobile,
Alabama and graduated from there with honors at age seventeen.
Then he went on to finally earn that law degree
(04:04):
as planned from the University of Louisiana in eighteen fifty
seven at age twenty. So he apparently had this amazing
memory which came in handy and studying law, and he
could recite the entire Louisiana Civil Code by heart. But
unfortunately he wasn't allowed to take the bar yet and
practice law until he came of age. Maybe not so unfortunately,
(04:24):
but that amazing memory is remember that part because it's
going to come into play a little later. But in
the meantime, while he's waiting to get old enough to
actually practice law, he got thrown back into the world
of chess. And the first American Chess Championship tournament was
being organized that summer in New York City, and Morphy's
friends convinced him, well, you're really good at chess, maybe
(04:47):
you should enter this tournament. Yeah, and at that time
Morphy was pretty much an unknown on the national scene,
but that didn't last very long at all, because he
walked away with first prize in this tournament after finally
defeating Lou Paulson, who was one of America's premier chess
players at the time, in the first game of their match,
though Morphy actually lost because of Paulson's extremely slow style
(05:09):
of play. Paulson would apparently take up to two hours
between moves, sounds like an agonizing amount of time to wait.
Having to wait this long actually frustrated Morphy into making
a mistake, but fortunately he came back and he won
five games over Paulson to take the championship, which I
think this sort of illustrates even my trouble with chess today,
(05:29):
Like it just takes a really long time between moves,
but the idea of two hours, I cannot get over that.
But it's a good point to to stop a little
and talk about Morphy's style of play, because we mentioned
in the introduction that he did sort of put a
new spin on the game. And the game was quite
old though, so putting a new spin on it in
the eight hundreds was a pretty revolutionary thing to do. Yeah,
(05:53):
the game had been around since the sixth century a d.
And if you need a little background on this, we
actually have an article goal on our website called house
Chess Works and it will give you us illustration it does,
and it can teach you the rules of the game
and also give you some of this history that we're
going to give you right now. So it started way
back then an Indian and gradually spread to the rest
of Asia, the Middle East into Europe. The rules and
(06:15):
the playing style, however, developed really slowly. They experienced the
most growth over the last couple of centuries actually, and
around the time of our story. Competitors would still display
a lot of reserve and deliberation during sometimes two hours worth,
and they fought really for every chess piece. Yeah, and
Morphy took a different approach. He didn't fight for every piece.
(06:37):
He was willing to sacrifice them. He played quickly, and
often he made unconventional sacrifices, so it would seem like
he was starting out badly and then he would suddenly recover.
And just to give you an idea of a few
of his tactics, if you even have a basic understanding
of chess, this will resonate. So he would often give
up his center ponds and then develop the stronger piece,
(07:00):
so put each chessman at its best advantage, instead of
bringing those into play later in the game, playing with
the ponds first and trying to keep them all or
as many people did at the time. Yeah, but he
avoided premature attacks. So just because he's trying to bring
the stronger pieces into the game earlier doesn't mean he's
being reckless with them once they are in the game, right,
And he never took more than twelve minutes to ponder
(07:22):
a move, So I think he would have preferred watching
him as a chess partner for him. Yeah, so these
strategies may not seem so radical today, but at the
time they really threw Morphe's opponents off their game. So
he not only won this national championship, he then went
on to play nine seven unofficial games with his competitors
and he won eighty five of them, which is truly remarkable.
(07:42):
And at that point he's considered America's best, so his
supporters started thinking, well, what is the next move he
can make? And morph he thought this himself started thinking, well,
if he's America's best, then it's time to take on
the best in the world, and so he sent a
challenge to England's Howard Staunton, who proved to be kind
(08:03):
of an interesting character himself. He was at the time
there wasn't really an official world chess championship, but Staunton
was considered the best because he had beaten the French champion.
He also wrote a regular chess column for the Illustrated
London News, and he had created this chess player's handbook
that he had published. Another kind of unrelated, unchess related
(08:24):
side note, he was also a Shakespearean scholar and that
was kind of his excuse for not taking Morphy's challenge
to come to America and face him. He had a
gig annotating Shakespeare plays at the time, so he was
a little busy. But he did say, Hey, if you
come over here instead, then I might play you. So
Morphy hopped on a ship in June eight and went
(08:45):
to Europe. Yeah, but once he was there, Staunton wasn't
willing to play. This kind of reminded me if you've
ever seen that documentary King of Kong. There's a lot
of drama and the people refusing to play. But to
really make things worse, Staunton didn't just refuse to play
or sort of dodge the challenge. He have so bad
mouthed Morphy and its Chess column, saying that Morphy was
(09:06):
only interested in winning money. And this really really offended
Morphy because he had always said that he just played
chess for the enjoyment of the game. He didn't see
it as a profession. He had a profession. This was
not it. Yeah, So he waited around for Staunton in
England for three months and then finally moved on to Paris.
He was really disappointed, not just because of the insults,
(09:27):
because he really actually wanted to play Staunton, but he
left August thirty one and he stayed in Paris for
six months after that, taking on several distinguished chess players there.
And it's there that he really got to display those
awesome memory capabilities that we mentioned back in his school days.
He became the first chess player at this time to
put on blindfolded exhibitions, so late that September, he took
(09:50):
on eight opponents simultaneously. He would sit on a chair
with his back to the chess boards, and he called
out his moves in order, speaking in French. At the time,
he was fluent in French, and he would make instantaneous
responses when his opponent's moves were announced. So again, just
an amazing feat of memory. He had to not only
remember the moves he made, but also remember all the
(10:11):
moves that all eight of his opponents had made and
visualize everything on the board. He had juggle all these
games at the same time. Yeah, it took more than
ten hours, mostly interestingly enough because of his opponents taking
so long to make their decisions, not him. And he
won six of these games, and he drew two of them,
So again just an amazing example of his analytical skills,
(10:34):
his memory skills, and it made him something of a
hero in Paris, I would imagine a celebrity. Pretty impressive display.
But the most notable matchup that occurred while he was
in Paris was was not one of these blindfolded displays.
It was a match against Carl Ernest Adolph Anderson, who
was considered Europe's best chess player, and Morphy had the
flu when he was supposed to play Anderson, and he
(10:57):
was getting the common treatment at the time, which sounds
like it would make matters a lot worse. Leeches were
sucking out four pints of his blood. He was laid
up in bed, but he still played Anderson in his
hotel in one seven games to two, so pretty remarkable.
He I guess he didn't feel lightheaded enough to to
(11:18):
have any confusion. Yeah, apparently he was able to stay
clearheaded enough to win this match and convince people, as
you might imagine, that he was the best player in
the world by the time he left for America again
in April eighteen fifty nine. That's what he was considered,
even by non chess players like people like Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Henry Wats, with longfellow Samuel F. B. Morse, who invented
(11:40):
the telegraph. Even President Van Buren's son John, All these
people celebrated him and honored him as the chess champion
of the world. Yeah, so the New York Ledger asked him, well,
why don't you write your own chess column. But his
stand there only lasted about six months, and by December
eighteen fifty nine, he was back to New Orleans. And
then the real shocker came early eighteen sixty he announced
(12:04):
that he would never play chess competitively for money again.
And at the same time, though, he issued this challenge
that he would meet any player in the world at
any time and give the other player the odds of
pawn and move, which means that he would remove one
of his pawns from play at the start of the game,
and then he'd also give his opponent the white pieces,
(12:27):
which always get the first move. So this remarkable retirement
and challenge issued at the exact same time. Yeah. No
one ever took him up on that challenge, though, so
he really never played chess officially competitively again. He only
played casual games with friends and acquaintances after that, he
tried to establish a law practice, since that was his
(12:48):
chosen career, but he never really had any success with it,
possibly because of the Civil War starting or his lack
of participation in the Civil War was another thing. He
decided not to fight in the Civil War and a
lot of people in his native New Orleans didn't like
that very much. Um, so they didn't really want to
become his clients. Well, and then there was just the
issue of his being a famous chess player, which maybe
(13:12):
that wasn't what people were looking for in their lawyer
at the time. Yeah, and I think you also get
maybe people are just walking through your door because you
are this with you. So he spent the war years
in Havannah and in Paris with his mother and his sister,
but eventually returned and lived the rest of his life
in New Orleans and his family home on Royal Street,
which if you have ever been to New Orleans or
(13:33):
know anything about it, it's the building where Brennan's restaurant
is now located. And he eventually died there of a
stroke while taking a bath July four So that leaves
this with a question, though, why did he give up
chess so so suddenly what happened? I mean, it surely
wasn't just so he could devote himself fully to his
legal career. There are a few furies out there about
(13:55):
why he left the game. Yeah. One is that Morphy
was deeply hurt by Staunton's insults and refusal to play him,
and that affected him so much that he wanted to
give up the game. Another theory suggests that it involves
his failed law practice somehow. And still other people think
that he gave up chess in pursuit of a woman
who wasn't interested in being with quote a mere chess player.
(14:18):
But today a lot of experts think that maybe mental illness,
specifically paranoia, had some part in this abrupt quitting of chess.
And there's no concrete evidence, just recollections of his behavior,
but his behavior does start to seem kind of strange.
His attitude started changing by the time he got back
from Europe, and he was just increasingly moody. And then
(14:41):
later in life he thought that people were out to
get him. He would take these long walks along Canal
Street and sometimes forget who he was entirely and asked
people to lend him money. Up to two hundred dollars
worth of money, and his paranoia might have made him
partly shunned by society, and he himself stayed secluded from
his friends, so he seemed like a different man. Yeah,
(15:03):
But the main thing that his paranoia seemed to hone
in on, seemed to focus on, was chess. By the
early seventies, he started to develop these ideas that he
didn't want to be associated with the game. He basically
refused to be whenever anyone wanted to sort of name
him an association or interview him for something as the
world's best chess player. He kind of wanted to shrug
(15:26):
that identity off. He didn't want to be a part
of it. Ironically, though, it's exactly for that reason that
he's remembered. It's for the game of chess. People still
study his games. Late chess master Fred Hinfield put it
like this, Morphy was the memorable genius who wrenched chess
out of the rut in which it had sluggishly dawdled
for a thousand years. So it's why he still admired. Yeah,
(15:49):
I think you mentioned me earlier that people still leave
chess pieces on his grave. Yeah, people visit his grave
and they leave chess pieces there. And you know, I've read,
you know, different pieces of research and blogs about this,
and some people wonder what would he think of that?
Since he wanted to not be identified as a chess player,
what would he think of would rather have the legal
code on his grave? And there are some obvious parallels
(16:11):
here to Bobby Fisher, who we talked about an introduction
to this podcast. He's also thought to have been paranoid um.
And actually there was a story in Time magazine from
two thousand five by Charles kraut Hammer, and he was
kind of exploring that connection between madness and genius and chess.
Does it make you crazy? Well? And that question out
there we can one up that question. We really can't. Well,
(16:33):
we can say we don't know the answer that question.
I don't know if anyone truly does. I mean, it
does seem kind of coincidental that there that connection comes
up a lot. But what we do know is that
chess will not make your head explode, Thank goodness, Thank goodness. Yeah.
And if you're wondering why were you bringing this crazy
thing up? I when I was researching this week, Julie
Douglas from Stuff to blow your mind. Mentioned she was like, oh, well,
(16:56):
did you know that there was this urban legend a
few years ago that chess players had exploded? And sure enough,
there was a story in the Weekly World News that
a chess players had exploded during a match because of
a rare electrical imbalance. Luckily, though, snowstot Com dispelled the
smith and they said that, no, that does not happen.
(17:18):
Although you know, I think that if I had to
wait two hours for my opponent, my head might implode
while I was sitting there. It's got a boredom. Yeah,
you might want to bring a book or something with you,
but don't think too hard. Because Snopes had this little
excerpt from kind of an Internet rendition of the myth,
and one of the quotes from it that was my
favorite was doctors urged people to take it easy and
(17:40):
not think too much for long periods of time. So
don't listen to too many podcasts in a row. Don't
do it. So, in order to not make you guys
think anymore, we're going to end our discussion of Chester
Were for your own safety, but we will encourage you
guys to write to us um. You can reach us
at History podcast at how stuff Works dot com or
(18:01):
you can look us up on Twitter at Myston History
or on Facebook. Yeah, and if you want to learn
a little bit more about chaff, we do have that
article that we mentioned, how chefs Work, if you can
find it on our homepage by searching for chess at
www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
(18:23):
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
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iPhone app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a chocolate boarding and I'm fair and
I have been knee deep in chess research this week,
of all things, inspired by a listener named Brandon who
(00:22):
is an avid chess player, and he wanted a podcast
about chess, anything to do with chess. He didn't really
seem too picky about what the exact topic was, as
long as it was chess related. Of course, in his email,
Bobby Fisher's name did come up. And when you start
researching the greatest chess players of all time, all signs
do kind of point to him. Even if you don't
know anything about chess, you know Bobby Fisher exactly. After all,
(00:46):
he did become the youngest grandmaster in history at age
fifteen and nineteen fifty eight, and he's also the first
native born American to hold the title of world champion
in nineteen seventy two. But what really sparked our interest
is that chess prodige you the Bobby Fisher. It was
there was someone else that Fisher himself referred to as
the greatest chess genius in history. And that was another American,
(01:08):
a New Orleans native named Paul Morphy. Yeah, and like Fisher,
Morphy was kind of a child prodigy, and he had
made his mark on chess at a very early age,
of surprisingly early age. And he also completely went against
the old ways of playing chess, which is what really
made him stand out, and it's what I found really
interesting about this subject. But strangely, his illustrious chess career
(01:31):
only lasted two years, something that makes him even more
amazing that he had such an impact, such an effect
in so short a span of time. Yeah, just when
he seemed poised to do bigger and better things, he
sort of faded into obscurity. So it was kind of strange.
Nowadays only aficionados know much about him, even though in
the day he was really well known to people even
(01:53):
outside of the chess community, the Bobby Fisher of his day, right,
So we want to look into that mystery a little bit.
What's the real story behind why Morphy abandoned chess so
abruptly even though he was so well suited for it,
so good at it, And why is he called the
Pride and Sorrow of Chess the title of our podcast.
But Of course, before we get into all of that,
we need to talk about how Paul Morphy got into
(02:16):
chess in the first place, because New Orleans is not
really known as being the center of the American chess scene,
or it certainly wasn't back in eight thirty seven June
two when he was born, and his family wasn't the
type that would drive their son into some sort of
professional chess career either. His father, Alonzo Morphy, was a
(02:37):
successful lawyer and he served in the Louisiana House of
Representatives and later went on to become the state's Attorney
general and serve on its Supreme Court. Well. His mother
was this prominent member of the New Orleans Creole society,
so his family was very wealthy, they were influential. He
seemed more destined for a career as a lawyer, not
a chess player, and that's exactly what his family, especially
(02:59):
his move or, really wanted him to do. Chess was
always kind of in the background of this, though. His
father and grandfathers taught Paul how to play, and Paul's uncle,
Ernest Morphy played and was also a pretty well known
chess analyst of the time, but by around age nine,
Paul had his own sort of reputation. He had a
local reputation as an accomplished player, and by age twelve,
(03:21):
he was considered New Orleans strongest player. Yeah, but his
greatest feeder. His first great feat came in eighteen fifty.
He had just turned thirteen and he played a three
game match against the Hungarian chess master janos Ja Lowenthal.
And this guy was considered to be one of the best,
one of the top ten players in the world, and
(03:41):
this little thirteen year old kid defeated him in all
three games, and it was just an amazing feat for
the chess world at the time. But between eighteen fifty
and eighteen fifty seven, Paul actually took a little break
from chess. He went to spring Hill College in Mobile,
Alabama and graduated from there with honors at age seventeen.
Then he went on to finally earn that law degree
(04:04):
as planned from the University of Louisiana in eighteen fifty
seven at age twenty. So he apparently had this amazing
memory which came in handy and studying law, and he
could recite the entire Louisiana Civil Code by heart. But
unfortunately he wasn't allowed to take the bar yet and
practice law until he came of age. Maybe not so unfortunately,
(04:24):
but that amazing memory is remember that part because it's
going to come into play a little later. But in
the meantime, while he's waiting to get old enough to
actually practice law, he got thrown back into the world
of chess. And the first American Chess Championship tournament was
being organized that summer in New York City, and Morphy's
friends convinced him, well, you're really good at chess, maybe
(04:47):
you should enter this tournament. Yeah, and at that time
Morphy was pretty much an unknown on the national scene,
but that didn't last very long at all, because he
walked away with first prize in this tournament after finally
defeating Lou Paulson, who was one of America's premier chess
players at the time, in the first game of their match,
though Morphy actually lost because of Paulson's extremely slow style
(05:09):
of play. Paulson would apparently take up to two hours
between moves, sounds like an agonizing amount of time to wait.
Having to wait this long actually frustrated Morphy into making
a mistake, but fortunately he came back and he won
five games over Paulson to take the championship, which I
think this sort of illustrates even my trouble with chess today,
(05:29):
Like it just takes a really long time between moves,
but the idea of two hours, I cannot get over that.
But it's a good point to to stop a little
and talk about Morphy's style of play, because we mentioned
in the introduction that he did sort of put a
new spin on the game. And the game was quite
old though, so putting a new spin on it in
the eight hundreds was a pretty revolutionary thing to do. Yeah,
(05:53):
the game had been around since the sixth century a d.
And if you need a little background on this, we
actually have an article goal on our website called house
Chess Works and it will give you us illustration it does,
and it can teach you the rules of the game
and also give you some of this history that we're
going to give you right now. So it started way
back then an Indian and gradually spread to the rest
of Asia, the Middle East into Europe. The rules and
(06:15):
the playing style, however, developed really slowly. They experienced the
most growth over the last couple of centuries actually, and
around the time of our story. Competitors would still display
a lot of reserve and deliberation during sometimes two hours worth,
and they fought really for every chess piece. Yeah, and
Morphy took a different approach. He didn't fight for every piece.
(06:37):
He was willing to sacrifice them. He played quickly, and
often he made unconventional sacrifices, so it would seem like
he was starting out badly and then he would suddenly recover.
And just to give you an idea of a few
of his tactics, if you even have a basic understanding
of chess, this will resonate. So he would often give
up his center ponds and then develop the stronger piece,
(07:00):
so put each chessman at its best advantage, instead of
bringing those into play later in the game, playing with
the ponds first and trying to keep them all or
as many people did at the time. Yeah, but he
avoided premature attacks. So just because he's trying to bring
the stronger pieces into the game earlier doesn't mean he's
being reckless with them once they are in the game, right,
And he never took more than twelve minutes to ponder
(07:22):
a move, So I think he would have preferred watching
him as a chess partner for him. Yeah, so these
strategies may not seem so radical today, but at the
time they really threw Morphe's opponents off their game. So
he not only won this national championship, he then went
on to play nine seven unofficial games with his competitors
and he won eighty five of them, which is truly remarkable.
(07:42):
And at that point he's considered America's best, so his
supporters started thinking, well, what is the next move he
can make? And morph he thought this himself started thinking, well,
if he's America's best, then it's time to take on
the best in the world, and so he sent a
challenge to England's Howard Staunton, who proved to be kind
(08:03):
of an interesting character himself. He was at the time
there wasn't really an official world chess championship, but Staunton
was considered the best because he had beaten the French champion.
He also wrote a regular chess column for the Illustrated
London News, and he had created this chess player's handbook
that he had published. Another kind of unrelated, unchess related
(08:24):
side note, he was also a Shakespearean scholar and that
was kind of his excuse for not taking Morphy's challenge
to come to America and face him. He had a
gig annotating Shakespeare plays at the time, so he was
a little busy. But he did say, Hey, if you
come over here instead, then I might play you. So
Morphy hopped on a ship in June eight and went
(08:45):
to Europe. Yeah, but once he was there, Staunton wasn't
willing to play. This kind of reminded me if you've
ever seen that documentary King of Kong. There's a lot
of drama and the people refusing to play. But to
really make things worse, Staunton didn't just refuse to play
or sort of dodge the challenge. He have so bad
mouthed Morphy and its Chess column, saying that Morphy was
(09:06):
only interested in winning money. And this really really offended
Morphy because he had always said that he just played
chess for the enjoyment of the game. He didn't see
it as a profession. He had a profession. This was
not it. Yeah, So he waited around for Staunton in
England for three months and then finally moved on to Paris.
He was really disappointed, not just because of the insults,
(09:27):
because he really actually wanted to play Staunton, but he
left August thirty one and he stayed in Paris for
six months after that, taking on several distinguished chess players there.
And it's there that he really got to display those
awesome memory capabilities that we mentioned back in his school days.
He became the first chess player at this time to
put on blindfolded exhibitions, so late that September, he took
(09:50):
on eight opponents simultaneously. He would sit on a chair
with his back to the chess boards, and he called
out his moves in order, speaking in French. At the time,
he was fluent in French, and he would make instantaneous
responses when his opponent's moves were announced. So again, just
an amazing feat of memory. He had to not only
remember the moves he made, but also remember all the
(10:11):
moves that all eight of his opponents had made and
visualize everything on the board. He had juggle all these
games at the same time. Yeah, it took more than
ten hours, mostly interestingly enough because of his opponents taking
so long to make their decisions, not him. And he
won six of these games, and he drew two of them,
So again just an amazing example of his analytical skills,
(10:34):
his memory skills, and it made him something of a
hero in Paris, I would imagine a celebrity. Pretty impressive display.
But the most notable matchup that occurred while he was
in Paris was was not one of these blindfolded displays.
It was a match against Carl Ernest Adolph Anderson, who
was considered Europe's best chess player, and Morphy had the
flu when he was supposed to play Anderson, and he
(10:57):
was getting the common treatment at the time, which sounds
like it would make matters a lot worse. Leeches were
sucking out four pints of his blood. He was laid
up in bed, but he still played Anderson in his
hotel in one seven games to two, so pretty remarkable.
He I guess he didn't feel lightheaded enough to to
(11:18):
have any confusion. Yeah, apparently he was able to stay
clearheaded enough to win this match and convince people, as
you might imagine, that he was the best player in
the world by the time he left for America again
in April eighteen fifty nine. That's what he was considered,
even by non chess players like people like Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Henry Wats, with longfellow Samuel F. B. Morse, who invented
(11:40):
the telegraph. Even President Van Buren's son John, All these
people celebrated him and honored him as the chess champion
of the world. Yeah, so the New York Ledger asked him, well,
why don't you write your own chess column. But his
stand there only lasted about six months, and by December
eighteen fifty nine, he was back to New Orleans. And
then the real shocker came early eighteen sixty he announced
(12:04):
that he would never play chess competitively for money again.
And at the same time, though, he issued this challenge
that he would meet any player in the world at
any time and give the other player the odds of
pawn and move, which means that he would remove one
of his pawns from play at the start of the game,
and then he'd also give his opponent the white pieces,
(12:27):
which always get the first move. So this remarkable retirement
and challenge issued at the exact same time. Yeah. No
one ever took him up on that challenge, though, so
he really never played chess officially competitively again. He only
played casual games with friends and acquaintances after that, he
tried to establish a law practice, since that was his
(12:48):
chosen career, but he never really had any success with it,
possibly because of the Civil War starting or his lack
of participation in the Civil War was another thing. He
decided not to fight in the Civil War and a
lot of people in his native New Orleans didn't like
that very much. Um, so they didn't really want to
become his clients. Well, and then there was just the
issue of his being a famous chess player, which maybe
(13:12):
that wasn't what people were looking for in their lawyer
at the time. Yeah, and I think you also get
maybe people are just walking through your door because you
are this with you. So he spent the war years
in Havannah and in Paris with his mother and his sister,
but eventually returned and lived the rest of his life
in New Orleans and his family home on Royal Street,
which if you have ever been to New Orleans or
(13:33):
know anything about it, it's the building where Brennan's restaurant
is now located. And he eventually died there of a
stroke while taking a bath July four So that leaves
this with a question, though, why did he give up
chess so so suddenly what happened? I mean, it surely
wasn't just so he could devote himself fully to his
legal career. There are a few furies out there about
(13:55):
why he left the game. Yeah. One is that Morphy
was deeply hurt by Staunton's insults and refusal to play him,
and that affected him so much that he wanted to
give up the game. Another theory suggests that it involves
his failed law practice somehow. And still other people think
that he gave up chess in pursuit of a woman
who wasn't interested in being with quote a mere chess player.
(14:18):
But today a lot of experts think that maybe mental illness,
specifically paranoia, had some part in this abrupt quitting of chess.
And there's no concrete evidence, just recollections of his behavior,
but his behavior does start to seem kind of strange.
His attitude started changing by the time he got back
from Europe, and he was just increasingly moody. And then
(14:41):
later in life he thought that people were out to
get him. He would take these long walks along Canal
Street and sometimes forget who he was entirely and asked
people to lend him money. Up to two hundred dollars
worth of money, and his paranoia might have made him
partly shunned by society, and he himself stayed secluded from
his friends, so he seemed like a different man. Yeah,
(15:03):
But the main thing that his paranoia seemed to hone
in on, seemed to focus on, was chess. By the
early seventies, he started to develop these ideas that he
didn't want to be associated with the game. He basically
refused to be whenever anyone wanted to sort of name
him an association or interview him for something as the
world's best chess player. He kind of wanted to shrug
(15:26):
that identity off. He didn't want to be a part
of it. Ironically, though, it's exactly for that reason that
he's remembered. It's for the game of chess. People still
study his games. Late chess master Fred Hinfield put it
like this, Morphy was the memorable genius who wrenched chess
out of the rut in which it had sluggishly dawdled
for a thousand years. So it's why he still admired. Yeah,
(15:49):
I think you mentioned me earlier that people still leave
chess pieces on his grave. Yeah, people visit his grave
and they leave chess pieces there. And you know, I've read,
you know, different pieces of research and blogs about this,
and some people wonder what would he think of that?
Since he wanted to not be identified as a chess player,
what would he think of would rather have the legal
code on his grave? And there are some obvious parallels
(16:11):
here to Bobby Fisher, who we talked about an introduction
to this podcast. He's also thought to have been paranoid um.
And actually there was a story in Time magazine from
two thousand five by Charles kraut Hammer, and he was
kind of exploring that connection between madness and genius and chess.
Does it make you crazy? Well? And that question out
there we can one up that question. We really can't. Well,
(16:33):
we can say we don't know the answer that question.
I don't know if anyone truly does. I mean, it
does seem kind of coincidental that there that connection comes
up a lot. But what we do know is that
chess will not make your head explode, Thank goodness, Thank goodness. Yeah.
And if you're wondering why were you bringing this crazy
thing up? I when I was researching this week, Julie
Douglas from Stuff to blow your mind. Mentioned she was like, oh, well,
(16:56):
did you know that there was this urban legend a
few years ago that chess players had exploded? And sure enough,
there was a story in the Weekly World News that
a chess players had exploded during a match because of
a rare electrical imbalance. Luckily, though, snowstot Com dispelled the
smith and they said that, no, that does not happen.
(17:18):
Although you know, I think that if I had to
wait two hours for my opponent, my head might implode
while I was sitting there. It's got a boredom. Yeah,
you might want to bring a book or something with you,
but don't think too hard. Because Snopes had this little
excerpt from kind of an Internet rendition of the myth,
and one of the quotes from it that was my
favorite was doctors urged people to take it easy and
(17:40):
not think too much for long periods of time. So
don't listen to too many podcasts in a row. Don't
do it. So, in order to not make you guys
think anymore, we're going to end our discussion of Chester
Were for your own safety, but we will encourage you
guys to write to us um. You can reach us
at History podcast at how stuff Works dot com or
(18:01):
you can look us up on Twitter at Myston History
or on Facebook. Yeah, and if you want to learn
a little bit more about chaff, we do have that
article that we mentioned, how chefs Work, if you can
find it on our homepage by searching for chess at
www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
(18:23):
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works
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