welcome back everybody to another historical deep dive here on the gotham chess youtube channel
today we are covering arguably one of the most famous chess games ever played now
whether or not you've seen it this game is used in countless classrooms it's got a lot of incredible
themes and the protagonist of this game is none other than american superstar paul morphy the year
is 1858 paul morphy is 21 years of age and the game is being played in paris as paul morphy was
invited as a guest of duke carl and his count as part of an opera i believe they were seeing norma
but i wasn't there and there are no text messages that i can send to the afterlife to confirm this
but there are many reports on many websites about this game now this game is actually uh it's it's
quite breathtaking it's quite interesting if you're a beginner you'll learn something if you've
already seen the game well hopefully i'll kind of re-uh refresh your memory and maybe give you some
some kind of inspiration from this game all the same so paul morphy begins the game with e4
we have e5 knight to f3 very normal stuff thus far developing knight comes out into
the center and attacks this pawn nowadays it is far more common in this position
than the move played in the game to play the move knight to c6 defending this pawn uh or you
can respond with knight to f6 counter-attacking the pawn in the center but back in the day they
like to play d6 now this is obviously not a bad move this is known as the philidor defense
but it has a drawback and the drawback is that the dark squared bishop is now blocked in
white at this point can continue developing pieces to the middle but as one of the main
ways of playing a king's pawn with a king's knight opening if you can put two pawns in the center you
should and paul morphy plays the move d2 to d4 all the while he's looking behind him to continue
to watch the opera rather than play the game the story legend goes that do carl and count uh isward
wanted to play during the opera which kind of seems like degenerate behavior frankly because why
wouldn't you just play before or why wouldn't you just play after but that's neither here nor there
but if my friends invited me to a movie and tried to play chess i'd probably smack them but bishop
g4 now played by uh played by the two um bishop g4 is developing a piece and pinning that's known as
a pin uh the knight cannot move without the queen being lost and that kind of alleviates a little
bit of pressure here uh to the e5 square but it is far more practical to take on d4 and again that is
the modern move but these players didn't know this 158 years ago or whatever 100 and i tried to do
mental math on the fly there and that absolutely failed uh it's definitely not 150 863 anyway this
is why i make chess videos and uh don't make math videos so pawn takes d4 is significantly
uh more common nowadays but bishop g4 was played and here paul morphy took on e5 why did he take on
e5 well this move forces duke carl and his count to play bishop takes here because if they did not
then you can take the queen you see and when you take the queen a couple of things happen first
of all black surrenders the right to castle but furthermore uh the knight can now take the free
pawn in the center simultaneously attacking two things now if the bishop goes back and protects
that pawn okay you at least don't lose this but you've lost the pawn you've lost the right to
castle and most likely you will lose precious watch time of this opera that you're sitting
uh and viewing so bishop takes f3 was played first and paul morphy took back and now pawn
takes e5 and you know the the prompt that i've given to my students all my scholastic students
who have seen i've shown this game at this point i start asking little questions and if you'd like
to pause the video feel free to kind of go along i'm not just going to show the game we'll also
have a mini lesson um white to move create uh the most fatal threat possible okay so feel free to
pause and go ahead um you know you can create a lot of threats in this position you can look at
things that are unguarded and find ways to attack them like queen to g3 queen to b3 for example um
but there's a move here that i said most fatal and that move would be bishop to c4 this move
very naturally develops a bishop and continues to mobilize development now white has two pieces out
versus black's zero pieces and you are threatening queen takes pawn which would be checkmate
um there's a few ways to defend this mate but do carl and his count play the move knight to f6 this
is known as interposing defense because now the queen can obviously not jump over the knight uh
the knight is blocking the path of the queen and it is sufficiently protected away from this queen
however here rather than just lazily castling or developing something or going like this
paul morphy breaks standard opening protocol he moves a piece for a second time despite not having
all of his development completed because he finds a nice geometric way to sync up both of his pieces
he finds something that's not guarded and he finds the f7 pawn and he plays queen to b3 which is
very strange move for probably people below about 11 1200 um if i had to give an arbitrary number
because it's it's just so non-standard to rotate the queen and and see in both directions many
people here would just kind of finish their development but we're talking about you know
greatest player of that generation so he plays queen to b3 now if i asked you which of these two
pawns is more important to defend you would say correct you would say obviously the pawn you're
the king right because that other pawn okay there's a rook over there but my king is more
important and you know if you block this i'm gonna take you and then i'm gonna bring in my queen
and it's mate that is not how the opera game ended that would be far less dramatic so you know they
guarded their pawn like this they guarded this pawn with the queen and their logic was that if he
takes my my b7 pawn if paul morphy takes this pawn and goes for my rook i have a very nice move here
and this is a concept known as danger levels my longtime viewers will know i love this term what's
worth more than a rook a queen a king and you you're worth more than a rook and in this case the
black uh queen and bishop would go here this move disallows white from taking the rook because the
queen simultaneously hits the two most valuable pieces in white's position and is defended that
would force a queen trade and even though paul morphy would would kind of end up a pawn
uh that's not good enough and paul morphy was not a scientist he was an artist he was not a you know
uh he he was not looking for one pawn strategic advantage he wanted to knock out these two dudes
immediately so he could go back to watching the performance that he traveled thousands of miles
to sea okay so he was not in the mood for a long strategic game he played the move knight to c3
this blocks the check and now queen takes b7 is re-threatened and black plays the move c6
defending the pawn with the queen uh at this point uh you need to continue your development
and rather than castling morphy decides that the best move is bishop to g5
why because we have another pin this bat this queen and bishop combo is called the battery
and he's also maintaining flexibility of which way he wants the castle
bishop g5 is a little bit more challenging than short castle because even though castling is good
the move bishop g5 actually legitimately applies pressure to the black position
and here blacks made a black black makes a fatal error black is already actually very
restricted because the queen is being is is blocking the bishop the knight cannot move
probably what black should do here is move out of the pin and try to develop the dark square bishop
but of course white has an overwhelming lead in development instead black tries to fight
and when when the move b5 occurs it attacks the bishop and you know some of us would go well
i can't go there i can't go there because i get taken so i'm just going to retreat and that is why
you are you and paul morpheus paul morphy because in this position paul morphy says hey i have four
attacking pieces and after the move b5 all i need to do is castle i will have a fifth one
and they don't have a lot they can't they haven't moved anything so
what if i take what if instead of retreating i sacrifice and his idea is that after c
takes b5 bishop takes b5 check it is not easy to stop this attack your options move this knight
lose your queen move your king into the middle and absorb a belligerent attack or
block like this so cocooning now you are dealing with two pins one is absolute one is not absolute
this is an absolute pin you cannot move the knight at all this is not absolute because you can lose
your queen i mean it's you're allowed to lose your queens a bad move but you know some people
have made a career on it and it's they've got a you know gambit named after them for it so
knight d7 is played and now if i ask you which way should you cancel you would of course say
very good of course long castle because now you at least have a rook laser beaming this night right
and even though paul morphy is down one point of material if you actually count
the utility of the position which of his pieces are out in about four bishop bishop rook queen
black is cocooning i mean nothing can move here right as evidenced by this next move defending
the knight from further pressure like literally i mean this is turtling you're and you're looking
out to see if anything can happen black needs at least two or three moves here to kind of
uncor you know untangle and and try to get back into the game and well paul morphy just doesn't
let you wait if i asked you in this position what should you do like what should you do if you're
playing with white maybe you look around you go my god i got this and i got this and you know
if i'm looking at this position this knight's not actually guarding that knight because right
pin okay so maybe a little queen a4 action let me get a little bit of pride maybe double my rooks
double my rooks is what that's called up over no you have to look at the most forcing moves first
and in chess the most forcing moves are the ones that make your opponent react i'll give
you an example this move is not forcing it doesn't make your opponent react but checks
and captures in that order make your opponent react for example bishop takes
i have to react because it's check rook takes i don't have to react but i probably should
because the bishop is still lingering and well that's exactly what paul morphy did he took
he took this way he did not take this way because while it is nice to remove the guard it's not the
right guard to remove he just goes directly to the epicenter of the action and here's the problem if
black takes like this you lose a queen if black takes like this you lose a queen if black takes
like this it's illegal and you smack your opponent don't actually do that i don't condone violence
rook takes rook is the only move the problem is you've lost a coating of defense for your king
and i still haven't moved one of my most important pieces and what piece is that
yes like this don't cash out of the casino just yet this bishop is worth far more than
this rook this bishop is powerful this rook can't move okay like it's just standing there
waiting to be obliterated and now we have a very serious problem the problem is that paul
morphe's threatening to take you cannot take with the king the queen or the knight you will
suffer devastating losses of material no matter what you take with so while they were like well
paul's most powerful attacking piece is his queen so of course we should play queen e6 because
now you can trade the queen for example if he were to take take and then say hey this rook
is guarded by this knight take take okay and now i'm gonna take you know the funny thing is
he's still completely winning i mean it's rook and bishop it's rook and bishop versus rook and bishop
but he's dominant i mean he's just absolutely dominant position here right even that would have
been good for paul morphy but paul morphy was not a scientist he was an artist and after queen to e6
he realized that it wasn't his queen that was his most powerful weapon in this position
it was his rook and feel free to pause here and find the uh the best move for white the best
combination it's one of the most iconic knockout combinations in chess starting with the most
forcing move in chess which is a check and i will now show it to you bishop takes d7 the idea of
playing queen to e6 is that now by moving the pin a queen out of this pin you can take with an eye
and it seems you've solved your problems your next move is pawn to f6 repelling the bishop maybe
you're gonna trade queens and then play pawn two of six i should say otherwise you lose the queen
uh and then you're very happy but here do carl and his count despite focusing fully on this game and
completely not on the spectacular performance that was going on behind them because they were
in a private booth completely negated to analyze the move queen to b8 which just looks completely
illegal but that's why paul morpheus paul morphine and these two bozos are these two bozos
queen to be a check the beautiful knockout punch because now the king cannot move anywhere
the knight has to take and remember i told you the most powerful attacking piece was actually
the rook well you can argue it was the bishop i mean who doesn't need a supporting cast right
but rook to d8 a beautiful mate absolutely beautiful mate
um and uh the conclusion of the historic 1858 opera game a game with a lot of interesting
principles actually if you if you really go through this game it's not just about
the the flashiness and you know paul morphy and the whole story it's a lot of you know
interesting layers of this game i'll just recap them for you taking the center and two pawns
bishop g4 being inaccurate in fact in general you should probably take in the center early and then
commit your pieces one more thing is don't get the bishops out and trade them off so quickly
because the thing is as the board opens up you've been presented with the light squared bishop so
early and now your light square bishop comes alive it has no counterpart you cannot give away bishops
so early in the game unless you keep the position closed so it's better to develop your knights
early than bishops and for white it's immediately important to counterbalance the desire to just
naturally develop your pieces with actually posing your opponents serious dangers in the
opening right and that's what paul morphy did not taking material in view of wanting to keep more
pieces on the board and potentially long lasting attacking effects right and then ultimately
not over extending not opening the board to such an extent when your king is still in the middle
even at the cost of material and if you're ever looking to sacrifice a piece for two pawns
make sure you have a concrete follow-up if it's very easy for your opponent to get their king out
of danger for example it's probably not good but in this case it was not easy and there were many
many more layers to the attack that ultimately culminated in a beautiful sacrifice and another
beautiful sacrifice and checkmate so i wanted to show this game there's many videos of it out on
youtube but if you were able to stumble 14 and a half minutes into my video i do want to show
you my appreciation uh you know it's a 17 move game from 1858 okay uh and ladies and gentlemen
the reality of the situation is back in 1858 i have no clue how these games even made it like
into chessgames.com think about that they didn't have they didn't mark they didn't put this on pen
and paper they played the game and then somehow it got submitted like how how did it make did paul
morphy just go back to the states like hey dudes look look how i smoked these bozos while they were
you know i was watching this i wasn't even looking at the board they were just saying their moves
i don't know i don't know but what i do know is paul morphy was an absolutely brilliant player
and uh this game i have used to many many effect to show opening principles uh the good and the bad
of the opening the way you should play the opening and all sorts of different tactics double attacks
long castling many different types of pins and sacrifices and not leaving your king in the center
and obviously the amazing checkmate pattern at the end so thank you for making it uh to the end of
this video and if there's any other historical games that you want me to cover however simple
they are or complex or sagas do let me know in the comments below if you're new to the channel
welcome if this is the first video first few videos that you've seen of mine i have a lot of
playlists on all elements of chess and if you are a long time viewer you already know the drill i
very much appreciate you thank you for supporting my content and uh i will see you in the next video