I love everything about this john! Beautifully explained; I really like how you set the scene to demonstrate this classic game. I don't know how you have time to do all this, but if you can, please do more! Thank you =)
Much prefer your use of a real board to demonstrate for us novice players. I feel much more engaged in this game. Your explanations of Morphys attack and thinking with each move are so instructive. I probably wouldn't have made queen to B3 in a million years but was such a subtle and brilliant strategic move.
Im a 1200 rated player and after watching this video for the first time i was able to recreate the whole game. Your amazing explanation to each move make it extremely easy to follow along and effortless to remember for the rest of my life!
I just memorized this game. My first ever game committed to memory. Took me A lot longer than I thought it would to get here, but glad to be here. Thanks for everything John.
What a beautiful game to learn from!! Thank you very much for sharing this with us! Happy I was able to pat myself on the back a bit this time around. The top players make so much of it look so easy! But I've recently been learning that it takes A LOT of experience to sew all the good advice together, truly build good habits, and have the awareness and tactical knowledge to make it all come together against formiddable opponents.
Paul Morphy's chess is like drinking the perfect amount of chilled Sake'. there is a kind of mind rapture i get from watching his games. i see a game like this and think how extraordinary it would be to Think and See this way.... about anything.... thanks for the video and commentary of this classic, John.
The real board really sets your channel apart as most videos I see use the crappy 2d board. By seeing this game on a real board, the game really came to life for me. Please continue to do commentaries of famous matches. You got a new subscriber.
When I saw this game for 1st time in my life i was totally surprised about how little i know about chess.If I could play 1 game like this in my whole life I would tell myself that I learn something about this Legendary game.
I've seen this game several times but I liked your explanations and the idea of committing it to memory. Everything makes sense so I didn't even need Chessable in this case, remembered it as is :) Showed it to my kids from memory now too, they liked it a lot!
Very well explained game. The narrator kept the viewer's interest by frequently asking the viewer what he/she would do, then pausing. Felt kinda good about predicting Morphy's next-to-last move of Qb8ch. (Not sure if I would have, had Mr. Bartholomew not asked "Now what do you think Morphy played?")
Excellent analysis! One of the things I like the best on RU-vid is analysis of GM games, and on top of that to get it analyzed by you is super cool. I hope we get to see some more GM analysis in the future. I especially liked that you explained the opening moves as well.
I really enjoyed this video instruction. Even though I have studied this game many times with many different commentators and still learned something. Chess is an amazing game. Tragically, both Morphy and Fischer suffered from the same psychological paranoia and both sadly gave up chess in their primes. I often wonder how many more fantastic games they could have played and given us to admire and study.
Fun fact- that Chess Set is a discontinued Set made by Excalibur. It is also the same type of Chess Set that was used in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me."
Wow, his moves are so logical too. These aren't diehard fully-committed attacking moves, they're also safe and solid. Morphy didn't see this checkmate on move 5, he was simply developing and attacking. The knight-pinning bishop on G5 turns out to be the star of the show, taking away any escape!
Hey John, i want you to know that thanks to this video, the opera house game has become the first chess game i ever memorized too :D thank you for that man.
Just had a bit of a case of the old Baader-Meinhof with this. I just watched your video on this game a few hours ago, and now I'm watching Queen's Gambit, season 1 episode 6. At 16:10 in the episode, when Beth's playing a simul with the three guys, I paused, and noticed that the board position is the one from this game, right at the moment of the queen sacrifice. I feel like that was a little easter egg they must have thrown in, since in the previous episode they compared her to Morphy. Great video, on a really interesting game.
JB, caught on to your channel from watching Chess Network and your battles with Danny Rensch. This is a GREAT way to learn about this instructive game. It's fun that you give us a chance to think like Morphy (with a little help haha). It's also nice to see a few "over the board" and still be able to distinguish the pieces. Thanks for posting!
The sheer beauty of Morphy's ruthlessness and development is one of the greatest facets of this superb game! What a genius Morphy was! There is so much to learn from Morphy's genius!
Hey John! I memorized this game a few weeks ago to teach it to my students. This was the first game I had ever memorized. It was interesting seeing your rendition of it. You pointed out a few continuations I wasn't aware of. Thanks for the video!
It's games like these that show the difference between grandmasters and players like me; grandmasters find strong moves like these in-game, I only see them when I'm told there's something to find. Missed that beautiful checkmate at the end though. Very instructive video John.
Great video! At first I memorized the game on chessable, and now once again you give the opportunity to enjoy the game in the your home cozy environment :)
"Time" works in a peculiar way in chess: in sports you can have "fast attackers" or "big and strong but slow defenders", but per the rules of chess it doesn't make any sense to talk about "fast" or "slow" pieces ... but then again: after watching this game it actually does! You somehow get the feeling that the White pieces are sooooo much faster than the Black pieces! Thanx, John! Basic principles explained so deadly people can understand it ... No wonder you are busy as teacher!
Congrats john for winning in the speed chess championship.. The 5 minute time in the finals gave us ur fans a scare... This is the first and the only game i have memorized too... Means i am on my way to being you.. haha... Opponents still once in a while surprise me in variations in this game but oftentimes whites advantage is too great to overcome in the end.. Will check ur repertiore in chessable
17:42 "[Morphy plays Rxd7. This is consistent with the idea of maintaining the pin rather than capturing, because the g5 Bishop is still around]". The idea becomes a lot clearer when you consider black's responses and conclude that Rxd7 is the only good one: after that move there is still a pin (but of a different piece). In my mind, _that_ is the reason it's consistent with "maintain pins". If black had not recaptured, there wouldn't have been a pin. (not recapturing is a problem for material reasons here, but you could easily imagine a position where e.g. a pawn is pinned, and when one player captures the pinned pawn, creating a protected pawn, the other player can capture some other pawn and the material is even.) TL;DR: I agree with your point but I would have stated it differently.
thx for this john, i had this exact game like a day after watching your video. i was thinking hmm it seems like ive seen this position before :D of course i took the pawn on b7 ;) and calmly traded the queens after his "counterplay" with qb4+
Hey there John, beautiful game thank you for sharing it with me and your subscribers! You constantly mentioned that you advise us to memorise the game- i was wondering maybe you could give us techniques or tips on how to memorise a chess game! Maybe show us how you did it- or anyone else reading this comment could suggest methods that have worked for them! Thanks again john for the instructive vids! Keep it up!
It would have been so funny if after all this very calm and excellent explaining of the match JB just dropped the rook and smacked lots of piece of the board on accident trying to catch it hahaha
10:53 there's the option of Bxf7+Qxf7 Qxg7, and White wins an Exchange plus 2 pawns. I suppose the recapture on f7 wouldn't be completely forced but Black's game is just dreadful in any case.
What chess set is this? I would like to get a similar one. Also the way the game ended reminded me of yesterday's live stream last game where john blundered himself into checkmate. ;)
Just like John this was the first game I learned by heart too, all be it 20 years before John did. I have also yet to meet a 2000 elo player who does not know this game. If you find yourself teaching a kid, do them a big favour and get them to memorise this game.
