A Chess Champion’s Dominance—and Madness

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011


Hello everyone,


Here is a very nice and interesting article by Karen Abbot in Smithsonian.com. It's titled A Chess Champion’s Dominance—and Madness. We thought it was about Bobby Fischer but very interesting read - It's about Paul Morphy. Such is our immediate connection with the adjective and Fischer.

Enjoy reading the article.

Paul Morphy playing "blindfold" chess in Paris, 1858. From Harper's Weekly.

A Chess Champion’s Dominance—and Madness

By the time Paul Morphy was felled by a stroke on July 10, 1884, he had become an odd and familiar presence on Canal Street in New Orleans: a trim little man in sack suit and monocle, muttering to himself, smiling at his own conceits, swinging his cane at most who dared approach. Sometimes he would take a fancy to a passing woman and following her for hours at a distance. He lived in fear of being poisoned, eating only food prepared by his mother or sister, and he believed that neighborhood barbers were conspiring to slit his throat. His family tried to have him committed to an asylum, but he argued his sanity so convincingly that the authorities declined to admit him. It had been a quarter-century since he became a world-renowned chess champion, and for the last decade of his life he was loath to discuss the game at all. Continue reading here.

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