Jim West On Chess: PCG: Morphy as White

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

PCG: Morphy as White

In five games playing the Philidor Counter Gambit as Black, Paul Morphy never lost, winning three and drawing two. I have often wondered what line Morphy would have chosen as White against the PCG, guessing that he probably would have developed a piece by either 4.Bc4 or 4.Nc3.

Actually there is game where Morphy favored 4.Bc4 over 4.Nc3, but there was little choice because he was playing at queen knight odds! The opening moves were 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 f5 4.Bc4 fxe4 5.Nxe5, resulting in a drawn rook-and-two-pawns versus two bishops endgame.

There is an error in the score of the game. Black played 34...Bb2, not 34...Bg7.

"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