Hello, Chess for Children kids, this is National Master Steve Colding and today’s subject is Morphy  Mates.

According to Wikipedia: “Paul Charles Morphy (June 22, 1837 – July 10, 1884) was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and an unofficial second World Chess Champion 1858–1860. A chess prodigy, he was called “The Pride and Sorrow of Chess” because he had a brilliant chess career but retired from the game while still young.  Bobby Fischer and Viswanathan Anand ranked Morphy among the ten greatest chess players of all time, with Fischer describing him as “perhaps the most accurate player who ever lived”.

The 3 checkmates that Paul Morphy is known for are the 1) Morphy’s Mate 2) Morphy’s Deferred Mate 3) The Opera Box Mate.

Morphy Mate

Morphy’s Mate #1 comes from the famous game Paulsen- Morphy New York, 1857 at the First American Chess Congress. We will put the actual game in the game examples below but for now we will just look at the basic mating pattern (see diagram below).

Answer: 1. Qf6 gf6 2. Rg1+ Kh8 3. Bf6 Mate

 We can see  Morphy’s Mate basic pattern in the diagram below:

 Answer: 1. Rg6+ Kh8 2. Rg6 Mate

Morphy’s Deferred Mate

Let’s move onto the basic pattern of Morphy’s Deferred Mate which is shown in the next diagram.

Answer: 1. Rg7+ Kh8 2. Rf7+ Kg8 3. Rg7+ Kh8 4. Rg6+ Rf6 5. Bf6 Mate

Opera Box Mate

Now  we can move onto the Morphy’s  Opera Box mating pattern which is demonstrated in the next diagram:

Answer: 1. Qb8+!! Nb8 2.Rd8 mate

Want to know more about Paul Morphy check out this amazing site