Just how good was Paul Morphy? It is impossible to say, for he was so far superior to anybody else that nobody could give him a really good battle. Within that time he created a body of games that still thrill with their beauty, imagination, daring and sheer finesse. In all, Morphy's career as an active chess player did not last much longer than a year and a half. (Some 50 years after Morphy's death, Alexander Alekhine was taking on 30 and more players in simultaneous blindfold exhibitions, and more recently Miguel Najdorf and Georges Koltanowski have that
When he did indeed die mad, in 1884, the savants knew the reason: strain on the brain caused by those simultaneous blindfold exhibitions. Either his back is toward them, or he calls the moves from another room.) Such an intellectual feat was considered superhuman, and it was widely predicted that the young American would die from brain fever. In blindfold chess the player does not see his opponents’ boards. (The term “blindfold” is not to be taken literally. He also astounded the savants by playing eight opponents simultaneously while blindfolded. The next two years he spent in England and France, meeting all who dared take him on, conquering all.
At 20 he went to New York and easily took top prize in the first American Chess Congress. At 12 he was so strong that in all probability no player in the world could have held him. At the age of 10 he probably was of master strength.
Morphy taught himself by watching his father play. Paul Morphy, who was born in New Orleans on June 22, 1837, was the first of the four supreme Wunderkinder of chess history (the others were Jose Capablanca, Samuel Reshevsky and Bobby Fischer). In only three fields of human activity have there been celebrated child prodigies ‐ in music, mathematics and chess.