Paul Morphy: The Opera Game, Staunton's Snub and the Pride and Sorrow

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Paul Morphy was born in 1837 in New Orleans to a wealthy family; his father Alonzo was a lawyer and state Supreme Court justice. No one formally taught him chess. He learned by watching family games, then showed his uncle Ernest a forced win in a game the adults had abandoned as a draw. At nine he beat General Winfield Scott, announcing a mate in six, and at twelve he beat the Hungarian master Johann Löwenthal. He then left chess for Spring Hill College and a law degree from the University of Louisiana, now Tulane, reportedly memorizing the Louisiana Civil Code, only to find in 1857 that he was too young to practice. To pass the time he entered the First American Chess Congress in New York and beat Louis Paulsen in the final.

In 1858 Morphy went to England to play Howard Staunton, who stalled for months, citing his work editing Shakespeare. In Paris, at the Café de la Régence, he was bled with leeches for gastroenteritis, then beat Adolf Anderssen seven wins to two with two draws while still weak. Garry Kasparov later credited him as the first player to grasp modern principles of rapid development and central control. Back home he was feted with banquets, Morphy cigars and a Brooklyn baseball club, but he called chess a mere recreation. His law practice failed because clients only wanted to talk chess. After the Civil War he grew paranoid, argued his own sanity so well in 1875 that a sanitarium released him, and died in his bath on July 10, 1884, aged 47.

• Morphy played eight simultaneous blindfold games while facing a blank wall.
• The Opera Game, played in a Paris box against the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard, is still used to teach beginners.
• After his triumphs he would only play serious opponents at odds of a knight.
• Psychoanalyst Reuben Fine's women's-shoes story misread a niece's account of Morphy arranging his own shoes.
• Bobby Fischer ranked Morphy among the ten greatest, and The Queen's Gambit has Beth Harmon name him as her favorite.