"The Genius of Paul Morphy" by Chris Ward, 1997 Cadogan
Books, Figurine Algebraic Notation, 205pp., $21.95 
Reviewed by Glenn Budzinski

Paul Morphy may be dead for 113 years, but forgotten he's
certainly not. Every few years a new book appears, purporting
to explore yet another aspect of his life or games. Hot off the
presses is the latest such work, British GM Chris Ward's "The
Genius of Paul Morphy".

The book's seven chapters and 205 pages include a total of 465
Morphy games, with 72 contained in Chapters 1 through 6 and the
remaining approximately 380 to 400 games in Chapter 7. Chapter 1
offers the briefest of biographies on Morphy (five pages total) that
focuses mostly on general observations about him; Chapter 2
covers "Morphy Miniatures", 16 selected games won by Morphy in
less than 20 moves each; selected games from Morphy's only
major tournament appearance, the First American Chess Congress,
can be found in Chapter 3; a selection of Morphy's European
games is contained in Chapter 4,"On Tour with Paul Morphy";
Chapter 5, "Against the Odds", includes games played at odds;
Chapter 6, "How to Beat Morphy", identifies a few of Morphy's
weaknesses, and Chapter 7 provides the remainder of all of his
known games to date.

A good way to understand what to expect out of a book is to
perform a careful reading of the Introduction. One could argue that
it is here where the author should provide a glimpse of why he
wrote the book and set the stage for what's to come. (Thus, at least
in this writer's opinion, a book without an introduction is usually a
book without a plan.)

With "The Genius of Paul Morphy", it took this writer a couple of
readings of the Introduction, coupled with a perusal of six of the
first seven chapters, before feeling relatively secure about
possessing a sufficient understanding of Ward's objective. He
writes (in the Introduction) that "it's not the sheer volume of
victories that makes him [Morphy] such a key figure in the game,
but rather the manner in which he achieved them...In the less
important games, although he had a tendency to part with more
than just the occasional piece, it's quite unbelievable what he
manages to achieve with a reduced and outnumbered army...Sit
back, learn from and enjoy the games, and judge for yourself the
genius of Paul Morphy." When one considers the author's focus to
be an examination of Morphy's creativity across the board, the
existence of chapters such as "Morphy Miniatures" and "Against
the Odds" begins to make sense.

To better judge Ward's modern day coverage, a comparison was
made with the other Morphy book of the 1990s, Macon Shibut's
"Paul Morphy and the Evolution of Chess Theory", published in
1993.

Taking a look at the basics, Shibut includes 465 Morphy games
while Ward claims to have "well over 450", but gives neither an
exact count nor a numbering system for the subsequent games after
the 72 highlighted examples shown in Chapters 1 through 6.

The majority of the 72 games are unannotated and presented
merely to be illustrative of a particular chapter's theme. Those
annotations that do exist mainly take the form of light
commentary, generally less detailed than annotations presented by
Shibut (although this may be an unfair comparison since Shibut is
writing from a different perspective).

Kudos, however, to Ward for devoting a chapter to selected
Morphy First American Chess Congress games, even if his
commentary to those games could hardly be considered detailed.
Some sources (including Shibut) simply present the games of
Morphy's only significant tournament appearance, devoid
altogether of commentary -- a sin of omission.

Both Shibut and Ward disagree with Bobby Fischer's now famous
quote that "Morphy was perhaps the most accurate player who ever
lived. He had a complete sight of the board and never blundered..."
(Ward, Page 8) Of course, we all know that, like every other great
player, occasionally even Morphy blundered. Curiously, although
both authors devote entire chapters to his oversights, neither
provides a close examination of the games of Thomas Barnes, the
English player who, Shibut notes, "took more full points off
Morphy than any other European master". (Shibut actually even
sets aside a separate chapter exclusively for Barnes, but still only
looks at one of the three surviving Barnes victories, the same game
shown by Ward in his Chapter 6.)

While Ward appears to have highlighted most of Morphy's best
and probably most well-known efforts in the first six chapters,
including the famous Count and the Duke game played at the opera
(Game #15) and Morphy's startling Queen sacrifice against Paulsen
(Game #24), Ward's failure to draw attention to the celebrated
18...Qa3!! game against Bird is a painful omission (although the
game is included in Chapter 7.)

Intriguing is Ward's identification of his Game #44 as Morphy - T.
Worrall from New Orleans 1857, a game usually referred to as
Morphy versus "Amateur" or "Unknown". Surveying the literature,
Loewenthal, from his 1860 book on Morphy, cites the game as
Morphy versus an unknown player, without a year or a location;
Frere (1859) refers to it as Morphy versus "Amateur", year and
location also unknown; Sergeant, in "Morphy's Games of Chess",
gives it as Morphy vs. "Amateur", but from New York 1857, not
New Orleans. Shibut addresses the game as "Morphy - NN" and
offers its origin as 1857 New York. While Ward may, in fact, be
correct about the assignment of this game to Worrall, rumored to
have been a strong Mexican amateur player, the inclusion of a
bibliography or at least a footnote to this particular game, would've
gone a long way in corroborating his claim.

Also on the subject of the alleged Morphy - T. Worrall encounter,
after 1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Nf3 g5 4 Bc4 g4 5 d4 gxf3 6 0-0 Bh6 7
Qxf3 Nc6 8 Bxf7+ Kxf7 9 Qh5+ Kg7 10 Bxf4 Bxf4 11 Rxf4 Nh6
12 Raf1 Qe8 13 Qh4 d6 14 Qf6+ Kg8 15 Qxh6 Bd7, Ward gives
White's move as 16 R1f3 and an editor's note in the book follows
which points out that 16 R4f3 has been cited by other sources and
"is more plausible".  Since Loewenthal, Sergeant and Frere all refer
to the move as 16.KR-B3 in English Descriptive notation (Shibut
offers 16 R4f3), (or f3 in algebraic), Ward's 16 R1f3 is probably
incorrect.  Of course, coupled with the previous assertion that the
opponent is Worrall, one can't help but wonder if Ward may have
unearthed new information.

But, as Ward also points out, it's moot whether White's 16th move
was R4f3 or R1f3, since even Morphy missed a quicker mate after
16 Rf8+ Qxf8 17 Qg5+ Qg7 18 Qd5+ Be6 19 Qxe6+ Qf7 20 Qf7#.
(The game actually continued 16 R4 [or R1]f3 Ne7 17 h4 Ng6 18
h5 Bg4 19 hxg6 hxg6 20 Rf8+ Qxf8 21 Rxf8+ Rxf8 22 Qxg6#.)
Obviously, Ward has taken about as close a look at this game as
anyone in history.

For those of you who are truly hard core Morphy trivia buffs,
Ward's spelling of the player named "J. Budzinski" is not what is
traditionally used by all other sources. As flattered as this writer
might be to think that a distant relative may have played a couple
of games against the great Morphy, the preferred spelling of that
Budzinski (at least until now) has always been with a "y", not an
"I", at the end. Lastly, it should be noted that the chapter 
heading given on the top of each page for Chapter 4 is incorrect.

Unfortunately, "The Genius of Paul Morphy" is one of those books
that seems to raise more questions than it answers. It is this writer's
opinion that the best way to view this book is as a modern day
compilation of Morphy's games, which means it uses algebraic
notation and 1990s commentary. Despite the claim on the book's
back cover that "Ward critically examines Morphy's style,
strengths and weaknesses - the first time that a contemporary
Grandmaster has so systematically appraised Morphy's games",
Ward's examination is neither particularly critical nor nearly as
rigorously detailed as one might expect from a grandmaster author.
For the average player who doesn't already own a collection of
Morphy games and absolutely requires algebraic notation, then this
work is essentially your only option. However, if you can live with
descriptive notation, Sergeant's "Morphy's Games of Chess",
which offers more game commentary as well as additional
biographical information, is still in print and costs less than half the
price.