Paul Morphy was a New Orleans born chess genius who wowed the world (or at least that small and geeky portion of it that cares about chess) with his aggressive and imaginative play in the decade before the Civil War. The hallmarks of Morphy’s play were aggresive attacks and complex sacrifices and combinations. It makes for exciting chess and people still study Morphy’s games as much for the wow-that-was-a-cool-series-of-moves fun of it as anything. No serious chess player, however, actually plays like Morphy any more.<\/p>\n
William Steinitz is the reason why. Steinitz became the World Chess Champion in the decades after Morphy, and is credited with discovering what is called positional chess. The idea of positional chess is that rather than focusing on the intricacies of tactical combinations and attacks, one should focus one’s attention on the structure of the board. Steinitz convincingly demonstrated that very small and seemingly insignificant moves — the placement of a few pawns early in the game for example — could have dramatic long term consequences later in the game. Put another way, Steinitz showed that deep strategic thinking could generally beat brilliant but unfocused tactical fireworks. <\/p>\n
This is an oversimplication, of course. Steinitz and other positional geniuses like Jose Capablanca were exceptionally clever tacticians as well. Furthermore, there have been a lot of post-Steinitz players known for Morphy-esque attacks. (Mikhail Tal comes to mind.) Still, no one seriously denies the importance of positional play in chess. <\/p>\n
In some ways this is unfortunate. Today, grandmaster level chess is basically boring. The vast majority of the games end in draws or resignations after one side gains a tiny strategic advantage, e.g. the capture of a single pawn or the mere undermining of a defensive position. The focus on position has placed ever greater emphasis on the opening of the game, which is the part of it that is the easiest to control and predict. The result has been long lines of memorized moves. GM’s will play games where twenty or more moves will be entirely memorized, with each player making moves identical to those made in some previous game that both of the GM’s know. The sheer mental ability required to play at this level is amazing, but the games are dull as dirt.<\/p>\n
It strikes me that the fate of chess illustrates a certain logic of mental development. Harold Bloom developed a theory of literature based on the anxiety of influence, the overwhelming sense that one can never escape the shadow of past masters and recapture the pristine originality from which mankind has fallen into the darkness of inevitable cliche. In a slightly different vein, Neal Maxwell was fond of contrasting “exciting exploration” with “plodding implimentation.” (Oh how I missed the alliterations and assonances last October!)<\/p>\n