Paul Morphy vs Capablanca

Who would win in the board?

Capablanca because as he is more advanced in time he knows everything that Morphy knows and more.

But Paul Morphy was a genius, so he probably would learn pretty quickly...😉

#3 Morphy was not a genius, he only understood the strategic rules that governed open positions in a time when nobody else did, and he was also good with tactics but nothing more, in short at least in my opinion Morphy was not very well, it was that his opponents were very bad, and you can draw that conclusion from analyzing their games.

@bossans2003, I agree that Morphy played vastly better than his (bad) opponents at the time and that compared to later chess greats his play is inferior. That doesn't necessarily mean he's less talented though. He played closed positions well too, he just seemed to prefer open positions (when you're that much better than your opponents, wouldn't you?). Anyway I think Capablanca would doubtlessly win a match, but if both players were born today and took up chess, I think it's quite possible Morphy would end up being the better player.

@bossans2003

You are totally wrong about Morphy. Morphy decisively defeated Adolf Anderssen in a match. Anderssen was a super GM.

Morphy was by far the best player in the world.

@mgold I came to write something and you already wrote it...

@bossans2003 Yes, he understood the game and it's underlying principle very well, better (like you said) than his opponents. And that's a good foundation to build upon, so my point still stands:

He would probably learn pretty quickly 😉

@mgold You seem to have some odd idea that Morphy only played bad players.

Morphy took on all challengers of every skill level, and defeated everybody.

Obviously, he lost some individual games, but nobody in the world had a plus score against Morphy.

@ambrooks, when I say "bad" I mean it on a relative scale. He played the best players of his time period. Those players were much worse than him.