Jim West On Chess: Morphy's Game in Hoboken

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Morphy's Game in Hoboken

Hoboken, New Jersey, is famous for being the hometown of Frank Sinatra. According to legend, the first baseball game was played in Hoboken.

But you probably did not know that Paul Morphy once visited Hoboken, where he lost a game of chess as Black against a consultation team of three players. This story and more can be found at the website of the Hoboken Chess Club.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov