Is Morphy's Playing Strength Weaker Than an I M to Day?

Alex freedman asked whether morphy's playing strength was weaker than an i m to day. The tactics that he plays are clearly, i m strength. He might have grand master level tactics, but not 19 hundred position positional understanding. And again, when you play through the games, they're very uneven.

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We are back for another Book Review podcast, a series called Chess Books Recaptured. This month we tackle Frisco Del Rosario’s First Book of Morphy, which is a Paul Morphy game collection book geared towards novice to intermediate players. My guest co-host this episode is Danish chess enthusiast, dad and linguist Mads Jønsson. As we note, First Book of Morphy does have some flaws, but Morphy’s games are amazing, and the annotations are helpful enough to make this book well-suited to its target audience. Please read on for lots more details, show notes, and relevant links.

0:00- We introduce our guest go-host, Mads Jonson, and he shares for his suggestion that we recap the First Book of Morphy.

6:30- We talk a bit about the book's background.

Mentioned: Lichess Study games 1-60, and 61-69

11:30- There are always great new courses from Chessable including FM Kamil Plichta’s Lifetime Repertoires: Accelerated Dragon. Check out what else is new here:

https://www.chessable.com/courses/all/new/

12:00- Perpetual Chess is also brought to you in part by AImchess.com. Check out the site, and if you decide to subscribe, use the code Perpetual30 to save 30%.

13:00- Patreon mailbag question: “Did Morphy play at the level of a modern IM?”

Mentioned: IM Ken Regan’s Intrinsic Rating Compendium, Chess Metrics Morphy

17:00- What chapters did Mads find most helpful?

Mentioned: Book Recap #16 Logical Chess Move by Move

25:00- What other changes could have been made stylistically?

28:00- Perpetual Chess is brought to you in part by Chessmood.com. They offer a huge video library with instruction on every phase of the game.

29:00- We share a few of our favorite games and quotes.

Mentioned: Morphy-Guibert 1958, Ben Finegold’s Paul Morphy videos,

36:00- We give a list of pros and cons related to the books.

39:00- What other “move by move” style books might one consider reading? (They are listed below in order of difficulty)

Logical Chess Move by Move (Podcast about it in Book Recap 16)

The Most Instructive Chess Games of All Time