Click here to look for "chess" with the Google search engine.   Hello friend!     ...............    Welcome to one of the best {private} chess sites around. (Recognized as such by several national chess federations and also "C.J.A." Site of The Year for 2004.)     ................     Check out my School of Tactics!!  ..........  Many improvements and NEW PAGES!!!!   (Be sure to check the T.L.A. in 'Chess Life' for the tournaments in your area.)  Thanks, and have a great day!!!

   A FIDE "Top 100" site.  
  Best site, CJA, for 2004.

(Navigation bar 
directly below.)

*******

 © A.J. Goldsby, 2015. 
  (All rights reserved.) 

****************

    Click  HERE 
     to see my       
    Chess Items.  

  ****************  

****************

Buy a book  
from Amazon.com
(And help me out as well!)

****************

 Click  HERE ...
 to see a list of the businesses that help to sponsor all of my chess efforts.

---

  T. Lichtenhein - P. Morphy; 
NY 1857

Theodore Lichtenhein (2420) - Paul Morphy (2800)
  [C55]  
1st American Chess Congress New York City, NY, 1857

1. e4 e5;  2. Nf3 Nc6;  3. d4!?, 
Today, we know this as the Scotch Opening. 

     [3.Bb5, is the Ruy Lopez, and is most common a the Master level. ]

3...exd4;  4. Bc4 Nf6;  5. e5 d5!; 
Black vigorously counter-attacks, rather than retreating.

6.Bb5 Ne4!; {Diagram?} 
A nice outpost. 
(The Knight is not easily removed from this square.)

7. Nxd4 Bd7;  8. Nxc6?!, (?) 
A bad loss of time.
(The Bishop on b5 is forced to retreat.)

     [8.Bxc6 bxc6; 9.0-0, "~" Black is probably OK here. ]

8...bxc6; (!)  9. Bd3 Bc5; (!)  
Almost an exclam. 
(Black aims at the weakest square in White's camp.)

10. Bxe4 Qh4!;  (Maybe - '!!')  
A nice in-between move. (Zwischenzug.)

11. Qe2 dxe4;  12. Be3!?, (At least a dubious, maybe even a - '?')
 Although this looks very natural, it is the wrong move here. 

 12...Bg4!!; (Maybe - '!!!')  
This had to be calculated VERY precisely.

(In some variations - in order to reach an evaluation that is beyond dispute - you sometimes had to calculate more than 15 moves ahead. I don't think Morphy did this, but instead relied on his intuition and his genius. We do know, from various reliable eye-witness reports, that Morphy could calculate 5-7 moves ahead very rapidly. We will never know exactly how far ahead Morphy did calculate, however.) 

13. Qc4 Bxe3; (!) 
The point.

14. g3[], 
This is pretty much forced. 

     [ 14.Qxc6+ Bd7; 15.Qxa8+ Ke7; 16.g3 Bxf2+; 17.Kxf2 e3+; 
        18.Ke1 Qb4+; 19.c3 Qxb2; 20.Qxh8, 
             (or 20.Qe4 Qc1+; 21.Ke2 Bb5+;  with a winning attack.)
       20...Qf2+; 21.Kd1 Ba4+;  22. Kc1 Qc2#. ] 

14...Qd8;  
Black attacks, even while retreating. (He now threatens Qd1#.) 

15. fxe3 Qd1+; 16. Kf2 Qf3+!;  
This is MUCH better than QxR/h1.

17. Kg1 Bh3!; ('!!') 18.Qxc6+ Kf8!;  
Black offers to give away BOTH Rooks. (The first with check.)

19. Qxa8+ Ke7;  White Resigns.
(White's Q is hanging, and Black threatens mate in one - three different ways!) 

 0-1 

(Code initially) Generated with ChessBase 8.0

Click  HERE  to return to the "Annotated Games" page.  

  Click  HERE  to go/return to my web page ... where I analyze this game in some detail.  

***

   Copyright  (c)  (LM) A.J. Goldsby I   

  Copyright (©) A.J. Goldsby, 1985 - 2012. 
  Copyright ©  A.J. Goldsby, 2013.  All rights reserved.   

  (Page last updated: Friday; September 20th, 2002.  Last edit or save on: 07/20/2013 .)