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cyna 16-Apr-09, 05:31 |
 Deleted by cyna on 16-Apr-09, 23:36.
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cyna 16-Apr-09, 10:47 |
Deleted by cyna on 16-Apr-09, 23:35.
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Morphy's NY Ledger Column www.chesscafe.com Play on... |
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Paul Morphy: Encyclopedia en.allexperts.com Play on ~ play well, Cyna |
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cyna jc |
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Morphy Shocks The Chess World www.irishecho.com Cyn |
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Chess Puzzles From The Games of Paul Morphy www.wtharvey.com |
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coopershawk 04-May-09, 21:53 |
Good links. Book? www.visi.com Has anyone tried this book? Paul Morphy and the Evolution of Chess Theory (Dover Books on Chess) (Paperback) by Macon Shibut The customer reviews on Amazon make it sound interesting. |
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Paul Morphy and the Evolution of Chess Theory books.google.com |
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coopershawk 05-May-09, 07:57 |
Thanks! John. instructive, and entertaining at the same time. Perhaps it would be useful if several of us read it at the same time. We could share comments and questions as we go through the book. Any one interested? I ordered my copy from Amazon, and I am cheap, so I used free shipping. It will be a week to ten days before it arrives. |
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cascadejames You and I can start off with "Paul Morphy and the Evolution of Chess Theory" and others might want to join us or post a book they found to be good and want to talk about with others. Would like to hear other folk's comments/suggestions. |
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coopershawk 06-May-09, 20:42 |
John Will do. In the other book thread ironbutterfly also indicates an interest in this. |
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cascadejames- book club |
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I'm in... Please keep me posted on any upcoming details... Thank you, Cyna |
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Lawson's |
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Let's do a PM book club I've never been in a book club and really have no idea how they run. But it seems to me that we need to meet on common ground and that should be with Shibut. I know that cascadejames and cyna have copies coming from Amazon. Ironbutterfly, I believe, has a copy. I'll order a copy of it tonight. Let me know your ideas on how we can go about discussing the book and making the PM book club a rewarding experience. |
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coopershawk 09-May-09, 21:30 |
I look forward to it. and will take it with me, so I will be able sign on to Gameknot in the evenings from motels while we are on the road. But I won't be able to follow along the book discussion unless I have the book. Some people may want to do is download the 415 Morphy games available in pgn format at the bottom of the page in the following link: www.supreme-chess.com No doubt this link will have many of the games in the book. When I play through a game in a book, I find it helpful to play through it using a computer program. Having the game already in pgn saves input errors, and lets you focus on the game instead of the computer. I recognize that some people consider any use of a computer chess program as poor form, and I would never use one during an ongoing game, but I do use them for post-game analysis and learning. I hope no one is too offended. |
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cascadejames re:I look forward to it Here's some suggestions to get the book thread started. Like I've said, I've never been in book club before so if there are better ideas, please let us know. -I think we all need to get our copies of the book first. -Reading the book first and then discussing it is not going to work for me. I suggest we take a chapter or two at a time for discussion. -As an "ice breaker" to stimulate a discussion we can each provide one or two points from the reading that "got our attention" and of course any questions on the material we have. Let us know what you think. jc |
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coopershawk 10-May-09, 20:16 |
book discussion I certainly agree that it makes no sense to try to read the whole book first before talking about it. I suggest breaking the book into smaller chunks (probably even smaller than a full chapter- perhaps game by game), as we go; and discussing them as we read the book. I am thinking of something analogous to "chunk theory" or "template theory." See: en.wikipedia.org) tinyurl.com Hopefully a promising organizational scheme will become apparent after we get the books in hand. Life goes on, pending games go on, and work happens, so I cannot commit to a rapid read. |
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coopershawk 10-May-09, 20:19 |
Deleted by coopershawk on 10-May-09, 20:19.
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coopershawk 10-May-09, 20:20 |
Better link tinyurl.com |
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coopershawk 10-May-09, 23:04 |
book schedule |
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It's great to have you on board with us. Keep the ideas flowing! |
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Shibut's book Part I - Analysis - is the heavy duty section (with deep analysis). It is divided into 8 chapters of roughly 15-35 pages each, focused on topics like "the play of our time," "Adolph Anderssen and the Standard of Pre-Morphy Chess," and "William Steinitz, Father of the Modern School," and we could spend some time reading and commenting on each chapter individually. Part II - Complete Games - is just that. His games are provided without analysis or commentary, pretty much in chronological order. There are two chapters, each with 8 sections. I'm not sure what to do with that, unless we want to discuss individual openings. Part III - Perspective - provides interesting reactions to Morphy and his style from Steinitz, Alekhine and Znosko-Borovsky. Good stuff! Anyway, there's some ideas as to how we might tackle the material. Clark |
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Queyrouze Manuscript Biography of Paul Morphy Title: "First and Last Days of Paul Morphy" Object Type: MANUSCRIPT, CLIPPING Artist/Creator/Maker: Constant Beauvais (author) Description: Biography of Paul Morphy, with newspaper clipping on Leona Queyrouze Barel. I'll let you know when I receive it. Cheers!! |
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Update On Above Mentioned Manuscript |
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Literary Review Serial: The Atlantic Monthly Volume 0004 Issue 24 (October 1859) Title: Reviews and Literary Notices: Summer Pictures, by H. M. Field [pp. 521-523] Collection: Journals: Atlantic Monthly (1857 - 1901) SOURCE: The "Making of America" collection held at the Cornell University Library: digital.library.cornell.edu |
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They Said What? According to this NY Times article, dated Aug 9, 1903, blindfold chess play killed our hero, after he went insane from playing "one of Morphy's series of eight, as he played them"... [would] "land a player in an insane asylum" The full .pdf text is here (copyright protected by The New York Times): query.nytimes.com SOURCE: query.nytimes.com |
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The City of London Chess Magazine by Tim Harding A History of The City of London Chess Magazine (Part 2), the final issue of 1875 and the chess scene in London: "Very sad news comes from America - viz. that Morphy has become insane, and is confined in a lunatic asylum. This intelligence does not surprise ourselves at all, for about two years since a Chess-player well known in this country, who was then lately from the States, gave us an account of a visit he paid to the great American in New Orleans. According to our informant Morphy presented the appearance of a man out of his mind, and his mother, who was present at the interview, trembled at hearing the visitor attempt to engage her son in conversation, for the game was never allowed to be mentioned in Morphy's presence, nor was there a Chess-board kept in the house, and, in fact, he had not played a game for years... "As to the probable causes of the aberration of perhaps the finest Chess intellect that ever directed a game, there will, no doubt, be much speculation. The Sportsman attributes it to blindfold play. This we take to be extremely unlikely. It is not much to the point to say that Labourdonnais in that way shortened his existence. The French master tried it in the decline of his life with faculties all unused; but when, as in Morphy's case, blindfold play commences in youth, there is, we believe, little danger to be apprehended from its practice, and it cannot be alleged that Morphy indulged therein to excess... (Potter went on to say that regular blindfold play did not seem to be doing Blackburne any harm!) "Chess, of course, may have been the cause of Morphy's mental fall; he may have loved it not wsiely but too well. A mind saturated with one idea to the exclusion of all others is necessarily predisposed to mania, and if a man allows himself to regard Chess as the one fact of existence, thereby starving his mind, which, like the body, requires a variety of food, then the texture of the strongest brain must become weakened, and the reason sooner or later be overthrown. Whether this was Morphy's case remains to be seen. "However, the disaster which has overtaken him may be accounted for in another way. Success came to him too early and was too complete. So far as Chess was concerned he had conquered the world, and henceforth he had no motive in life." SOURCE: www.chesscafe.com |
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Dick Cavette's Talk Show: Bobby and You Dick Cavett February 22, 2008 Bobby and You Blog Posting #24, February 23, 2008: "Fischer had a precursor whom I have not yet seen in any of the obits. Paul Morphy grew up in ante-Bellum New Orlean. He picked up the game watching his father play visitors to the house. By the age of four he could beat them all. Like Fischer, he grew up in a chess cocoon; and, like Fischer, he was frustrated trying to claim the world championship. (There was no formal championship at the time, so he toured Europe, seeking matches with the greatest names of the day, many of whom tried to avoid Morphy.) He smashed them all. The most curious parallel came after his success: he became a virtual hermit, increasingly imbalanced, and spent most of his adult life in an insane asylum. I wonder if this is coincidence or common cause? Chess is a solitary pursuit, and the greatest players seem to share a morbid fear of losing. How long can an individual maintain this intensity and still retain their mental balance? Fischer condemned Soviet chess as a collective activity; indeed, as he played in Reykavijk, the elite would coach Spassky each night. Fischer regarded this as a form of cheating. But the Soviet system kept chess players involved with other people, and they did not go crazy. Perhaps Fischer and Morphy both paid the price for being the lone paladin." — chess old timer SOURCE: The New York Times, Opinion, Friday, August 21, 2009: cavett.blogs.nytimes.com |
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