Morphy's Knight in the Corner

For me, the most amazing thing about Morphy was not how far ahead he was of other players at that time. For me, it was the phenomenal ability to play crazy tactical positions blindfold, and his brilliance at odds games. Here's a game he won when he was about 12 against his uncle, playing at odds of a rook!

The final position is quite extraordinary, with a knight on h8 delivering mate!

Of course Black could have defended better, but that is hardly the point. Building a repertoire of mating patterns is more important than building an opening repertoire for most players. Building tactical awareness  and vision is the single most important improvement factor for beginners, and even intermediate level players.

Chessbase 13 allows a search of similar moves, and the unusual Ng6xh8 is certainly a move worth checking out. The database search brought up 751 games where the move Ng6xh8 has been played, of which white scores over 70%. One game that isn't in the database is Potter-Matthews London 1858.

1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.c3 [The Danish Gambit] 3..c5 4.Nf3 d6 5.Bc4 Nc6

So the first thing to consider if you really want to get a Ng6xh8 manouvre in, is that fast development is the key to early attacks. Morphy knew this as well as anyone. Open lines help as well! 6.0-0 d3 7.Re1 Bg4

Black's play has been too slow, too many pawn moves. If the centre was open, then black's king would be in the firing line. 8.e5 Nxe5? [one pawn grab too many]

9.Nxe5!! An excellent queen sacrifice 9..Bxd1

Now there's a discovered check on the e-file crying out to be played, but Potter wants more, he wants it to be a double check. 10.Bb5+ Ke7 11.Bg5+! A fantastic check skewering black's queen.

11..f6 Not the best defence, but black was lost whatever he did, so he might as well block the check and hold on to his queen. Anyway, it lets us see another Nxh8# move!!

Now it's mate in 2 starting with the double check 12.Ng6+ Kf7 13.Nxh8#

A very similar position has arisen to the Morphy-Le Carpentier game!

And for those of you who think these things are a bygone relic of the 1800's, here's a game from the 2000's. Now it won't be Grand Masters playing this sort of chess anymore, but then again, the majority of players reading this blog won't be Grand Masters. And even the GM's will have a chance to play this sort of thing during their simuls. So look at these games, add the pattern to your repertoire, and most importantly, don't let these things happen to you.

In this position white has sacrificed a piece, but now has mate in 2 starting with the double check 1.Ng6+ and then 1..Kxf7 2.Nxh8#

Line Opening with Paul Morphy

I put up a couple of positions by the great Paul Morphy from his most famous games the other day. Time to have a look.

Paulsen-Morphy USA ch 1857

This has been my game of the week this week for showing to kids. It starts with a sensible 4 knight's opening, there are some nice tricks, and some strange/poor moves that are instructive. Morphy, as black in this position played to his strength which was opening lines for rapid development. He came up with the great sacrifice, 17..Qxf3!! Paulsen must take back 18.gxf3

White's king has been ripped open, and Morphy's pieces now stream into the holes. 18..Rg6+ 19.Kh1 Bh3

[The threat is 20..Bg2+ 21.Kg1 Bxf3#. 20.Rg1 is not playable as white is mated after 20..Rxg1+ 21.Kxg1 Re1+ 22.Qf1 Rxf1#] Paulsen carried on but was forced to resign on move 28. Morphy did miss a couple of quicker mates, but the sacrifice of the queen on f3 to open lines was simply excellent.

The second position I put up was from the game Bird-Morphy London 1858, one of the most analysed games in history.

Bird-Morphy (m5) London 1858

I wonder if Morphy was thinking about his masterpiece against Paulsen from the previous year when he came up with a plan to offer his queen to open lines for rook and bishop. 17..Rxf2 An astounding idea, opening the third rank. This move, and the few following have been subject to an immense amount of analysis over the years. Was this sacrifice correct? Should the game have ended a win for black, a draw? Try googling bird-morphy and see what results come up, or just try to make the white defence stronger. 18.Bxf2 Qa3!!

An amazing queen move from Morphy! Obviously, the queen can't be taken, 19.axb3 Bxa3#. Notice the similarity to the Paulsen game? Bird, who wasn't the best defender succumbed to the onslaught on move 29, and one of the greatest queen moves of all time proved successful.

More Morphy to come....

Learning from Morphy

Yesterday I put up a relatively easy position to solve. As this week I am teaching the joys of tactics to primary school kids, and using games and positions from Paul Morphy's career.

Black to play

This was from a blindfold game, and Morphy as black came out with the excellent discovered attack, 1..Ng3!!. Discovered attacks are particularly difficult for kids to see so I try to show them plenty of examples, getting them thinking of the whole board and the ways that piece moves will affect other pieces. It also shows that tactics help us to make moves that would be otherwise unthinkable, like putting a knight on a square where 3 pieces can take it. The point of Morphy's move is that 2.Qxg6 fails to Nde2 mate.

I was talking earlier in the year to a colleague Frank Meerbach about Morphy. Frank has been showing Morphy games for a long time, and is known to like the great American master. I asked Frank his favourite games and he said:

Paulsen-Morphy USA Ch 1857
Bird-Morphy London (m5) 1858
Opera House Game

There will, of course, be others but these 3 are absolute classics reprinted in many books, including all of them making it into Garry Kasparov's "My Great Predecessor's, Volume 1". It is important to gain something from classics, and there are some similar themes in the Paulsen and Bird games. I'll put the positions up, and then talk about them next time.

Paulsen-Morphy, Black to play

Bird-Morphy, Black to move

Whether you are trying to work out Morphy's combinations for the first time, or whether you are reliving them, enjoy!

Teaching Tactics

It's always fun and rewarding teaching kids tactics, or as I prefer to call them, tricks. Teaching kids the patterns and then seeing their sense of achievement when they employ a tactical operation in one of their games is great. This term I'm showing a load of games and positions from tactical masterpieces, with a particular emphasis on teaching kids to recognise the basic tactical themes of pins, forks, discovered attacks and skewers. Of course, there will be many other things happening in the games, but it is important that young children recognise the basic patterns best of all, with an idea to employ them properly, and defend against them as well.

This week Paul Morphy takes the limelight, so I thought I'd throw some positions on here. I'm not going to be showing every position to the kids that I put up here, there were just too many to choose from.

So, Monday's move...well, actually Morphy played this game blindfold, so maybe I should just put the moves up, and give you all the chance to try to work out Morphy's move, blindfold!

Nah, here's the position with black to play.

Black to play

Answer tomorrow with more Morphy tactics!

Glen Eira Chess Club

The success of any new venture depends on the commitment of the individuals involved. When I talked to my friend and colleague, David Cordover, about starting a chess club in our area, he basically just put in a massive effort and made it happen. Things like getting a venue, applying for grants, telling people about the club have been done by David without hesitation. He just sees what needs to be done, and then does it. I've taken more of a hands on role, ensuring the club is open each week, and informing members of what's going on. Actually, this last thing has been a bit sporadic, and it is something that I would like to improve upon. I personally think that every chess club should have a weekly newsletter, whether it be delivered by email/paper to members, or published on a website. It doesn't need amazing chess content every week, but it should reflect upon the members of the club.

Once you have a couple of committed leaders driving a project, you just need to develop a core group of people who will become involved on a regular basis, and this is now happening at Glen Eira Chess Club. We have run a set of 7 round swiss events with no entry fees and no prizes, though they do qualify for an end of year club championship which will have prizes. This format has worked really well for our club as other clubs in Melbourne are somewhat more serious. We open our doors at 6 pm and have an hour of junior/casual play and then our tournament games start at 7.15 pm. The games are 60 + 10 which means we don't have a particularly late finish is another consideration for lots of players.

So we wanted a social environment, where players could compete seriously if they wanted to, and where a chess community could flourish and develop. This we seemed to have achieved with a regular turn out of between 12 and 25 players, and more like 50 players having tried the club out through it's first year. Besides the regular players, we have had some very distinguished Australian chess guests drop in to the club. IM James Morris played in our first 7 round swiss event this year, while FM Domogoj Dragicevic is playing in the current event.

The current tournament is the last chance to qualify for the end of year championship. We decided on holding qualifying events so that the regular members get an even chance to play in the club championship as averse to strong players who come to the club just to play that event. If a strong player wants to play our club championship, they have to qualify, the same as anyone else. So far, that's worked pretty well with a combination of strong players and regulars making it through. At the same time as our club championship, there will be a reserves championship for anyone who doesn't qualify for the championship. Next year, there will be a slightly different criteria for qualifying, but more on that later.

This week, I had to play against a local player originally from Russia. As Glen Eira has quite a high proportion of immigrants from Europe, it is not surprising that we are getting chess players from these countries. I'm an European immigrant! In fact, our tournament this time has players representing England, Holland and Iceland so Europe is doing quite well. My opponent plays a pretty decent game for a part timer, but he played a bad opening and never really recovered.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Bg4?!

This was the opening moves of the famous 'Opera House Game' between Morphy and Count Isouard and the Duke of Brunswick. As I've shown this game to numerous chess classes through the years, I followed in Morphy's footsteps for a few moves before my opponent deviated from the famous game. It didn't really make things better for black who suffers from a bad king position and poor piece development. I managed to win the game, but my opponent created some difficulties for me, and although not a regular chess club player, he must be at least 1500 strength, and perhaps was stronger earlier in his life.

For those of you that haven't seen the great game, here is Morphy's amazing win analysed by Steinitz. Enjoy :)