I'm not sure I go along with 'ahead of his time.' He simply was the strongest player around. I think it kas to be recalled that the other very strong players of his time, Adolf Anderssen to take one example, or Howard Staunton for another, just didn't play very often. Both were amateurs. At the time of Morphy's tour of Europe both had played hardly a single game in years. Morphy had been taking on all comers for months. ++++++++++++++ Having said that, there was probably more scope mid-19th Century for idiosyncrasies of style to reach out into relatively unexplored regions of chess strategy and tactics. Morphy had his style; Steinitz his, and Lasker a combative style that few could understand, let alone emulate. Morphy and Lasker going toe to toe would have been something to see, and might, given a tweak of history, have taken place. Pity it never did.

@ archduke_piccolo: I truly do believe that Morphy was some 50-70 years ahead of his time, and I stand by those words 100%. Morphy's play was the next, more mature stage in the development of chess. He had a well-developed "feeling for position", and IMO he can be confidently regarded as the prototype of the strong 20-th century GM. Like Philidor a hundred years before him, Morphy was GREATLY ahead of his time. Euwe put it best: "if the distinguishing feature of a genius is that he is far ahead compared with his epoch, then Morphy was a chess genius in the complete and purest sense of the word." Morphy spontaneously established the three main principles of opening play: 1) the rapid development of the pieces; 2) the seizure of the center; 3) the opening of lines. To ACTUALLY FORMULATE these and other principles of positional play a further quarter century and the mighty intellect of the next chess titan - Wilhelm Steinitz.

A fine game. What makes the climactic ...Qa3 so spectacular is the switch from the h-file to the a-. But I think I've seen profounder combinations. I wasn't playing through this game with much attention to looking ahead for possibilities, but after ...Rxf2, the ...Qa3 follow-up leapt to the eye at once.

One of the many reasons I look to Morphy was because he was a player that played with no fear. No challenge was to great for him, and he more often than not rose to the occasion. An excellent game and great annotation.