Some games are remembered for a single brilliant move. This one is remembered for all of them. In seventeen moves, Paul Morphy develops his pieces, opens the lines towards the enemy king, gives away a knight, a rook and finally his queen — and delivers checkmate with the only two pieces he has left. More than a century and a half later, it is still one of the first great games that chess players study.
Paul Morphy (1837–1884) was born in New Orleans. By the age of twenty he had won the First American Chess Congress in New York, and in 1858 he crossed the Atlantic to test himself against Europe’s best. He won every match he played there, including one against the German Adolf Anderssen, then considered the strongest player in the world, by seven wins to two with two draws. His public career lasted less than two years. Back in America he gave up serious chess, and never returned to it. What he left behind was a style decades ahead of its time: bring every piece into play first, attack second.
His opponents that evening were two aristocrats playing together as a team, agreeing each move between them. Karl II, Duke of Brunswick had ruled a German duchy until a revolt drove him out in 1830; he spent the rest of his life in exile, much of it in Paris, and died in Geneva in 1873, leaving his fortune to that city. His partner was a French nobleman, Count Isouard de Vauvenargues — the spelling of whose name is not quite settled, since documents of the time also write it “Isoard”. Both were keen amateurs. Neither was anywhere near Morphy’s strength.
The game was played in Paris in the autumn of 1858, in the Duke’s private box at the Italian opera house, the Théâtre-Italien. Our best witness is Frederick Edge, who travelled with Morphy and wrote about the visit a year later. According to Edge, the box stood so close to the stage that “you might kiss the prima donna without any trouble”, and the Duke kept a chessboard in it. On their first visit the opera was Bellini’s Norma. Morphy, who loved music, had hoped to watch it — instead he was seated with his back to the stage, playing chess, while his two opponents argued so loudly over their moves that the soprano singing Norma kept glancing into the box.
Two details of the story are less certain than they are usually made to sound. It is not proven that this particular game was played on that first night, and some accounts name a different opera altogether; and sources disagree on which Paris theatre housed the Italian opera’s performances. What is not in doubt is the game itself, which has been printed, move for move, ever since.
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 — Black chooses the Philidor Defence, named after the great eighteenth-century player François-André Danican Philidor. It is solid but passive: the pawn on d6 shuts in Black’s own bishop on f8.
3.d4 Bg4 — Black pins the knight on f3 against the queen. It looks active, but it is already a small mistake: the bishop will have to give itself up for the knight, and Black will fall behind in development.
4.dxe5 Bxf3 — Black has little choice. If 4…dxe5, then 5.Qxd8+ Kxd8 6.Nxe5, and White wins a pawn with the knight hitting both the bishop on g4 and the pawn on f7.
5.Qxf3 dxe5 — Material is level. But look at what has happened: Black has swapped off the only piece it had developed, and White’s queen now stands in the game, eyeing the weak point f7.
6.Bc4 — A developing move with a threat: queen takes f7, and it’s mate. 6…Nf6 blocks the queen’s path, but it lets White switch targets.
7.Qb3! — The queen slides behind the bishop, lining up on the same diagonal to f7, and at the same time attacks the pawn on b7. 7…Qe7 covers f7 — but leaves b7 hanging.
8.Nc3 — Here is the moment that tells you most about Morphy. He could simply take the pawn on b7; a modern engine even rates that very slightly higher. But after 8.Qxb7 Black has 8…Qb4+, offering to trade queens, and Morphy has no interest in simplifying. He brings out another piece instead. 8…c6 shores up the b5 and d5 squares.
9.Bg5 — Another piece joins in, pinning the knight on f6 against the queen behind it.
Count the pieces. White has a queen, a knight and both bishops in play, and can castle next move. Black has only the knight on f6 and the queen, and the queen is standing on the one square that blocks the bishop on f8. The kingside knight is pinned, and developing the other one to d7 would let White take the pawn on b7 with interest. Black is not lost yet — but the engine’s best suggestions here are awkward shuffles such as 9…Kd8. There are almost no useful moves left.
9…b5? — Black lashes out, attacking the bishop on c4. This is the real mistake: it opens lines on the queenside just as White is ready to use them.
10.Nxb5! — The first sacrifice. Morphy gives his knight for a pawn, because recapturing will open a path to Black’s king. 10…cxb5 11.Bxb5+ Nbd7 — White has two pawns for the knight, and a grip that is worth far more.
Even at this point Black had a better choice than taking the knight: 10…Qb4+ would have forced the queens off the board. Black would still have been clearly worse — but without White’s queen there could have been no mating attack. Taking the knight is what opened the floodgates.
12.O-O-O! — Castling queenside tucks White’s king away and, in the same move, brings a rook to the d-file, straight onto the pinned knight. 12…Rd8 adds a defender.
13.Rxd7! — The second sacrifice: a whole rook for the knight. 13…Rxd7 14.Rd1 — and a new rook takes its place. The black rook on d7 is now pinned exactly as the knight was, attacked by the rook and the bishop.
On paper Black is well ahead: a whole rook for two pawns. On the board, Black is helpless. Every black piece is either pinned, blocked or tied to defending another.
14…Qe6 — Black tries to free itself, unpinning the knight on f6 and offering to trade queens. The engine prefers 14…Qd6, but nothing would have saved the game by now.
15.Bxd7+ — Not the queen trade: Morphy takes the rook, with check. 15…Nxd7 — the natural recapture, and the losing one. Taking back with the queen was the only move that avoided a forced mate, though Black would still have been lost.
16.Qb8+!! — The third and most famous sacrifice: the queen, offered on a square where it can simply be taken. Black has exactly one legal move. 16…Nxb8 — and in taking it, the knight leaves d7, the one square that was blocking the d-file.
17.Rd8# — Checkmate. The rook gives check along the back rank and covers d7; the bishop on g5 protects it and covers e7; Black’s own bishop on f8 and pawn on f7 fill the last two squares. The king has nowhere to go.
Look at the material at the end. Black still has a queen, a rook, a bishop and a knight. White has a rook and a bishop. None of that mattered, because every one of White’s pieces was working, and almost none of Black’s were.
It would be unfair not to add one honest note. Morphy’s opponents were amateurs, and their defence was weak; some writers have pointed out that it is not a great game in the sense of two masters at their best. That is exactly why it is so good to learn from. Against weak moves, Morphy shows the right way to punish them — cleanly, quickly and without a single wasted move.
You can replay more great games of chess history, move by move, in the Classics section under Learn.
Chess pieces: “cburnett” set by Colin M. L. Burnett, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Chess Thrill runs without third parties: the game, its fonts and its engine are all served from this site. We would also like to use Google Analytics and Google advertising, which do send data to Google. Only with your consent, and only if you are 16 or older. See our Privacy Policy and Terms. You can change this at any time.