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This term is basically bullshit. If you're talking about the strongest player in the world, there were plenty of "unofficial world champions" before him (e.g. Philidor, Labourdonnais). I propose we excise it from the lead. MaxBrowne2 ( talk) 08:30, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
I have acquired a copy of the 2010 edition of Lawson, and I am trying to use it to improve the citations in the article.
Other things being equal, a secondary source such as Lawson is a better reference than a tertiary source. However, the first edition of Lawson, which was published in 1976, may have been harder to obtain when this article was first written than some tertiary sources. So at that time, editors may have been tempted to cite tertiary sources, but now, Lawson should be routinely cited.
As detailed by Lawson on pages 226-7, the pamphlet by Buck about Morphy introduced a number of historical errors, which have been widely copied (even by Sergeant), and can be found in some of our tertiary sources; for example, as I write this, we are quoting some article that gave 1882 as the date of the incident in which Morphy's family tried to take him to the "Louisiana Retreat". This is another reason to cite Lawson whenever possible. Bruce leverett ( talk) 02:02, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
Two different scores for a game played between Morphy and Löwenthal in 1850 have been published. In one score, submitted by Ernest Morphy to various chess periodicals in 1856, Morphy won the game; in the other score, published by Löwenthal in his collection of Morphy's games in 1860, Morphy achieved a winning endgame but went astray and allowed a draw.
Sergeant (Sergeant 1957, pp. 210-212) uses the version published by Löwenthal. Lawson (Lawson 2010, pp. 21-32) discusses the discrepancy at length, strenuously arguing that Löwenthal's version must be incorrect, and referring to it as a "gross error", while implying that it may not have been just an error, but the result of outright dishonesty. But Lawson apparently does not even consider the possibility that it might have been Ernest Morphy, not Löwenthal, who fudged the game score.
I have modified the article to take a neutral position between Sergeant and Lawson on this question, in accordance with WP:N. Bruce leverett ( talk) 03:44, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
I have organized the single table of results into several tables, while trying to verify entries against reliable sources. I have removed entries about blindfold games and consultation games. The following entries have been changed or removed:
I have avoided using the term "casual". Nowadays this means any game not played for stakes or played in a tournament or formal match. But in Morphy's day, tournaments were not common. Games serious enough to warrant keeping score, and publishing the score in a magazine, were played in settings that we would now call "casual". Bruce leverett ( talk) 02:05, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
@ AirshipJungleman29: Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I will restore some of the sources you have removed, but I will bring the section into line with WP:Further reading, which is not official policy, but looks reasonable to me.
Bruce leverett ( talk) 22:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
We are quoting Euwe saying that Morphy was "... a chessgenius in the complete sense of the word." However, we aren't citing Euwe directly, but are citing him as quoted by Valery Beim. I would like to find the original source of this quotation -- perhaps it is in Euwe's book "The Development of Chess Style"? It would be better to cite something by Euwe than to cite somebody else quoting Euwe, because one could be sure that Euwe's words were correctly quoted, and one would have a publication date and other context. Bruce leverett ( talk) 20:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
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Reviewer: Remsense ( talk · contribs) 07:34, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
As a subject that I've done more than a bit of personal off-wiki research on, I'm snapping this up as my first GAN review with considerable pleasure.
GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not) |
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Remsense 留 07:34, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm doing some while I review, to the reference list, tables, and so on. of course, they are not necessary to the review, I just can't help myself. if they are in any way objectionable please don't hesitate to let me know! Remsense 留 09:08, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
There is some discussion in Lawson of how Morphy's reputation had reached New York well before he did, which I found thought-provoking, considering it was before the days of organized tournaments, let alone rating systems, etc. This can be seen on pp. 45-46 and 50-51. I would prefer to cite Lawson, rather than the Eagle, because (1) it is a (reliable) secondary source, and (2) one does not need to subscribe to Newspapers.com. Also, I would prefer to keep things chronological, by discussing this before the paragraph giving the results of the tournament, instead of at the end of that paragraph. Will get around to this late tomorrow. Bruce leverett ( talk) 03:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I have already been told to fix a "citation needed" tag in order to get to GA, so I figure that we must fix our own "verification needed" tag, too.
The question is, did Steinitz see Morphy in New Orleans in the 1860s, or did he not? Lawson says nothing about this, and suggests (p. 300) that they had not met until 1883. But from this edit [1], and this earlier edit [2], apparently Landsberger's biography of Steinitz claims that Steinitz met Morphy "in the 1860s". Without having read Landsberger, I would guess that he indeed made that claim, since another experienced editor put in a proper citation for it. But I have no way to evaluate Landsberger's claim, without seeing his book and looking at his sources.
If I cannot make progress with this, I would be inclined either to altogether remove the mention of Steinitz meeting Morphy in the 1860's, or to put it in a footnote, along with the "verification needed" tag. Bruce leverett ( talk) 02:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
This was a great pick for my first GAN, I learned a lot doing it. Thank you to
Bruce leverett for fixing up this article, for fixing up my mistakes when I started reviewing, and for being engaging throughout the process, and to
MaxBrowne2 for their help during the review process as well.
Understandably, the biography of this article is built on the foundation of Lawson (1976; 2010), but there is a healthy body of independent, usually earlier works about his life and times that adds dimension and backs up most of the claims made in the article.
The other primary body of claims that require sourcing are the games, which are luckily well-documented and basically canonical in the chess tradition. The article is very no-nonsense (despite my attempts) yet it is clearly very valuable for someone wanting to learn about Morphy for the first time—I wish this article was in this state when I first learned about him.
Great work! I want to continue working on this article, but I've now gone through it in its entirety, and it clearly meets the criteria.
Remsense
留
06:33, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
@ Quale: Upon reflection, I agree that the lead paragraph should not mention future events like the chess world championship, but should concentrate on what made Morphy notable. I correct people all the time about putting inappropriate things in lead paragraphs.
I am not entirely comfortable with the phrase "world's greatest", but I will let it sit for a while, maybe someone else can think of something better.
It might be appropriate to bring up the World Championship in the body of the article, perhaps in the "Hailed as champion" section. First, because readers and other editors are always bringing it up. The grating phrase "unofficial world champion" frequently appears in this article and others. Second, because I have been struck by the fact that organized and professional chess were just getting started in this part of the 19th century: the first international tournament in 1851; national championships; the world championship formally in 1886; successful professional players and writers such as Steinitz and Blackburne. Sports, such as American baseball, were likewise starting to get organized and professionalized in the late 19th century. When Morphy told his audience during the New York testimonial dinner that "Chess never has been and never can be aught but a recreation", he wasn't taking an extreme or eccentric position, but was giving his listeners what he and they thought was hard-headed career advice; but the advice seems strange to us nowadays, because people have routinely made serious careers out of chess and sport, and that started happening soon after Morphy's retirement from chess. Bruce leverett ( talk) 03:14, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
In the 'Style of Play' section it states that Morphy 'usually opted for [1.e4]'. My understanding was that Morphy was exclusively a 1.e4 player, and reference to the databases at chesstempo.com and chessgames.com supports this idea.
I wonder if any editors have access to a definite source for the complete games of Paul Morphy and can confirm the issue one way or the other? Or, failing that, if anyone knows of any games where Morphy did not open with 1.e4? Axad12 ( talk) 22:18, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
These are not so much the names of openings as umbrella terms for whole families of openings. Saying "I played the King's Pawn Game" instead of just "I played 1.e4" sounds very odd to a chess player. It's like saying "I have a pet mammal" instead of "I have a pet dog". MaxBrowne2 ( talk) 00:34, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Paul Morphy article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1,
2Auto-archiving period: 365 days
![]() |
![]() | Paul Morphy is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() | Paul Morphy has been listed as one of the Sports and recreation good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on April 14, 2004. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() |
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
This term is basically bullshit. If you're talking about the strongest player in the world, there were plenty of "unofficial world champions" before him (e.g. Philidor, Labourdonnais). I propose we excise it from the lead. MaxBrowne2 ( talk) 08:30, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
I have acquired a copy of the 2010 edition of Lawson, and I am trying to use it to improve the citations in the article.
Other things being equal, a secondary source such as Lawson is a better reference than a tertiary source. However, the first edition of Lawson, which was published in 1976, may have been harder to obtain when this article was first written than some tertiary sources. So at that time, editors may have been tempted to cite tertiary sources, but now, Lawson should be routinely cited.
As detailed by Lawson on pages 226-7, the pamphlet by Buck about Morphy introduced a number of historical errors, which have been widely copied (even by Sergeant), and can be found in some of our tertiary sources; for example, as I write this, we are quoting some article that gave 1882 as the date of the incident in which Morphy's family tried to take him to the "Louisiana Retreat". This is another reason to cite Lawson whenever possible. Bruce leverett ( talk) 02:02, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
Two different scores for a game played between Morphy and Löwenthal in 1850 have been published. In one score, submitted by Ernest Morphy to various chess periodicals in 1856, Morphy won the game; in the other score, published by Löwenthal in his collection of Morphy's games in 1860, Morphy achieved a winning endgame but went astray and allowed a draw.
Sergeant (Sergeant 1957, pp. 210-212) uses the version published by Löwenthal. Lawson (Lawson 2010, pp. 21-32) discusses the discrepancy at length, strenuously arguing that Löwenthal's version must be incorrect, and referring to it as a "gross error", while implying that it may not have been just an error, but the result of outright dishonesty. But Lawson apparently does not even consider the possibility that it might have been Ernest Morphy, not Löwenthal, who fudged the game score.
I have modified the article to take a neutral position between Sergeant and Lawson on this question, in accordance with WP:N. Bruce leverett ( talk) 03:44, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
I have organized the single table of results into several tables, while trying to verify entries against reliable sources. I have removed entries about blindfold games and consultation games. The following entries have been changed or removed:
I have avoided using the term "casual". Nowadays this means any game not played for stakes or played in a tournament or formal match. But in Morphy's day, tournaments were not common. Games serious enough to warrant keeping score, and publishing the score in a magazine, were played in settings that we would now call "casual". Bruce leverett ( talk) 02:05, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
@ AirshipJungleman29: Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I will restore some of the sources you have removed, but I will bring the section into line with WP:Further reading, which is not official policy, but looks reasonable to me.
Bruce leverett ( talk) 22:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
We are quoting Euwe saying that Morphy was "... a chessgenius in the complete sense of the word." However, we aren't citing Euwe directly, but are citing him as quoted by Valery Beim. I would like to find the original source of this quotation -- perhaps it is in Euwe's book "The Development of Chess Style"? It would be better to cite something by Euwe than to cite somebody else quoting Euwe, because one could be sure that Euwe's words were correctly quoted, and one would have a publication date and other context. Bruce leverett ( talk) 20:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: Remsense ( talk · contribs) 07:34, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
As a subject that I've done more than a bit of personal off-wiki research on, I'm snapping this up as my first GAN review with considerable pleasure.
GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not) |
---|
|
Overall: |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Remsense 留 07:34, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm doing some while I review, to the reference list, tables, and so on. of course, they are not necessary to the review, I just can't help myself. if they are in any way objectionable please don't hesitate to let me know! Remsense 留 09:08, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
There is some discussion in Lawson of how Morphy's reputation had reached New York well before he did, which I found thought-provoking, considering it was before the days of organized tournaments, let alone rating systems, etc. This can be seen on pp. 45-46 and 50-51. I would prefer to cite Lawson, rather than the Eagle, because (1) it is a (reliable) secondary source, and (2) one does not need to subscribe to Newspapers.com. Also, I would prefer to keep things chronological, by discussing this before the paragraph giving the results of the tournament, instead of at the end of that paragraph. Will get around to this late tomorrow. Bruce leverett ( talk) 03:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I have already been told to fix a "citation needed" tag in order to get to GA, so I figure that we must fix our own "verification needed" tag, too.
The question is, did Steinitz see Morphy in New Orleans in the 1860s, or did he not? Lawson says nothing about this, and suggests (p. 300) that they had not met until 1883. But from this edit [1], and this earlier edit [2], apparently Landsberger's biography of Steinitz claims that Steinitz met Morphy "in the 1860s". Without having read Landsberger, I would guess that he indeed made that claim, since another experienced editor put in a proper citation for it. But I have no way to evaluate Landsberger's claim, without seeing his book and looking at his sources.
If I cannot make progress with this, I would be inclined either to altogether remove the mention of Steinitz meeting Morphy in the 1860's, or to put it in a footnote, along with the "verification needed" tag. Bruce leverett ( talk) 02:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
This was a great pick for my first GAN, I learned a lot doing it. Thank you to
Bruce leverett for fixing up this article, for fixing up my mistakes when I started reviewing, and for being engaging throughout the process, and to
MaxBrowne2 for their help during the review process as well.
Understandably, the biography of this article is built on the foundation of Lawson (1976; 2010), but there is a healthy body of independent, usually earlier works about his life and times that adds dimension and backs up most of the claims made in the article.
The other primary body of claims that require sourcing are the games, which are luckily well-documented and basically canonical in the chess tradition. The article is very no-nonsense (despite my attempts) yet it is clearly very valuable for someone wanting to learn about Morphy for the first time—I wish this article was in this state when I first learned about him.
Great work! I want to continue working on this article, but I've now gone through it in its entirety, and it clearly meets the criteria.
Remsense
留
06:33, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
@ Quale: Upon reflection, I agree that the lead paragraph should not mention future events like the chess world championship, but should concentrate on what made Morphy notable. I correct people all the time about putting inappropriate things in lead paragraphs.
I am not entirely comfortable with the phrase "world's greatest", but I will let it sit for a while, maybe someone else can think of something better.
It might be appropriate to bring up the World Championship in the body of the article, perhaps in the "Hailed as champion" section. First, because readers and other editors are always bringing it up. The grating phrase "unofficial world champion" frequently appears in this article and others. Second, because I have been struck by the fact that organized and professional chess were just getting started in this part of the 19th century: the first international tournament in 1851; national championships; the world championship formally in 1886; successful professional players and writers such as Steinitz and Blackburne. Sports, such as American baseball, were likewise starting to get organized and professionalized in the late 19th century. When Morphy told his audience during the New York testimonial dinner that "Chess never has been and never can be aught but a recreation", he wasn't taking an extreme or eccentric position, but was giving his listeners what he and they thought was hard-headed career advice; but the advice seems strange to us nowadays, because people have routinely made serious careers out of chess and sport, and that started happening soon after Morphy's retirement from chess. Bruce leverett ( talk) 03:14, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
In the 'Style of Play' section it states that Morphy 'usually opted for [1.e4]'. My understanding was that Morphy was exclusively a 1.e4 player, and reference to the databases at chesstempo.com and chessgames.com supports this idea.
I wonder if any editors have access to a definite source for the complete games of Paul Morphy and can confirm the issue one way or the other? Or, failing that, if anyone knows of any games where Morphy did not open with 1.e4? Axad12 ( talk) 22:18, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
These are not so much the names of openings as umbrella terms for whole families of openings. Saying "I played the King's Pawn Game" instead of just "I played 1.e4" sounds very odd to a chess player. It's like saying "I have a pet mammal" instead of "I have a pet dog". MaxBrowne2 ( talk) 00:34, 22 February 2024 (UTC)