Morphy number

Paul Morphy

The Morphy number is a measure of how closely a chess player is connected to Paul Morphy (1837–1884) by way of playing chess games.^[1] People who played a chess game with Morphy have a Morphy number of 1. Players who did not play Morphy but played someone with a Morphy number of 1 have a Morphy number of 2. People who played someone with a Morphy number of 2 have a Morphy number of 3, et cetera.

The idea is similar to the Erdős number for mathematicians and the Bacon number for actors. For example, Viswanathan Anand, along with many current top players, has a Morphy number of 5: Anand played Efim Geller (Morphy number 4), who played Salo Flohr (Morphy number 3), who played Géza Maróczy (Morphy number 2), who played John Owen (Morphy number 1), who played Morphy.^[1] Taylor Kingston states that the idea of the Morphy number may have originated in a June 2000 note by Tim Krabbé, who has Morphy number 4.^[2][3]

Morphy and Löwenthal, who is getting a Morphy number of 1

As of April 2016, Leonard Barden, Pal Benko, Arthur Bisguier, Melvin Chernev, Dennis Horne, Borislav Ivkov, Erik Karklins, Franciscus Kuijpers, Aleksandar Matanović, Friðrik Ólafsson, Jonathan Penrose, Oliver Penrose, Arturo Pomar, and Peter Swinnerton-Dyer are the only known living players with Morphy number 3.^[4][5][6]

Many ordinary players have a Morphy number of 6 or less.^[2]

Morphy number of famous players

These are players who are important in making links for Morphy numbers.

Morphy number 1

Morphy is known to have played about 100 people, but all of the known links for players with Morphy number 2 go through the following six players.^[1][4] Some Irish players could go through the Rev. Dr George Salmon, who played in one of Morphy's blindfold chess simultaneous exhibitions.

Adolf Anderssen Henry Bird James Mortimer

John Owen Louis Paulsen Other opponents

Morphy number 2

Everyone in this group played someone in the group above. Some of the most important members of this group follow.^[1] Tartakower lost to Mortimer early in his chess career, which spanned beyond WW2, so allowed many younger players to gain a 3.

Semyon Alapin Ossip Bernstein Joseph Blackburne Amos Burn Mikhail Chigorin Eugene Ernest Colman[7] Isidor Gunsberg David Janowski S. Lipschütz

Emanuel Lasker George Mackenzie James Mason Jacques Mieses Géza Maróczy Reginald Michell Harry Pillsbury Carl Schlechter

Edward Guthlac Sergeant[8] Jackson Showalter Wilhelm Steinitz Siegbert Tarrasch Savielly Tartakower Richard Teichmann Szymon Winawer Eugene Znosko-Borovsky Johannes Zukertort

Morphy number 3

Most of the masters in this group played several members of the previous group. This group includes some of the most important players for making connections to later generations. Botvinnik and Reshevsky played older masters such as Lasker and Janowski, had long careers, and played many younger players.^[1] Najdorf was Tartakower's pupil and they played a number of published games together, and Najdorf played blitz right into his 80s, allowing many younger players to achieve 4. C.J.S. Purdy played Tartakower (2), enabling many Australian players to achieve 4. As of March 2015, fewer than 15 of them are still alive.

James Macrae Aitken[9] Alexander Alekhine Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander Leonard Barden Pal Benko Arthur Bisguier Efim Bogolyubov Fedor Bogatyrchuk Mikhail Botvinnik David Bronstein José Raúl Capablanca Martin Christoffel Arnold Denker Marcel Duchamp Oldřich Duras Erich Eliskases

Max Euwe William Fairhurst Reuben Fine Salo Flohr Svetozar Gligorić Borislav Ivkov Paul Keres George Koltanowski Čeněk Kottnauer[10] Franciscus Kuijpers[11] Kick Langeweg[11] Bent Larsen[4] Edward Lasker Andor Lilienthal Aleksandar Matanović Frank Marshall Stuart Milner-Barry

Miguel Najdorf Aron Nimzowitsch Friðrik Ólafsson Jonathan Penrose Arturo Pomar Lodewijk Prins C.J.S. Purdy Samuel Reshevsky Akiba Rubinstein Friedrich Sämisch Rudolf Spielmann Herman Steiner Milan Vidmar Robert Wade[12] Norman Whitaker Baruch Harold Wood[13]

Morphy number 4

As of 2013 many of these players are still alive; a few (such as Short) are still active.^[1]

Ulf Andersson Yuri Averbakh Alexander Beliavsky Isaac Boleslavsky Donald Byrne Mark Dvoretsky Ben Finegold Bobby Fischer Semyon Furman Efim Geller Vlastimil Hort Robert Hübner Ljubomir Ljubojević

Anatoly Karpov Garry Kasparov Ratmir Kholmov Viktor Korchnoi Alexander Kotov Gary Lane Tony Miles Bruce Pandolfini Tigran Petrosian Susan Polgar Lev Polugaevsky Lajos Portisch Hans Ree Ortvin Sarapu

Jonathan Sarfati Yasser Seirawan Nigel Short Vasily Smyslov Boris Spassky László Szabó Mark Taimanov Mikhail Tal Jan Timman Rafael Vaganian Walter Browne

Morphy number 5

As of 2013 many of the top grandmasters are in this group (along with a large number of lesser players).^[1]

Michael Adams Viswanathan Anand Magnus Carlsen Nigel Davies Boris Gelfand Mikhail Gurevich Vassily Ivanchuk Gata Kamsky Rustam Kasimdzhanov

Alexander Khalifman Vladimir Kramnik Joël Lautier Péter Lékó Karsten Müller Predrag Nikolić John Nunn Judit Polgár

Ruslan Ponomariov Zoltán Ribli Valery Salov Alexei Shirov Jon Speelman Peter Svidler Veselin Topalov Artur Yusupov

See also

• List of chess players
• Shusaku number, the equivalent for the board game of Go

References

1. Your Morphy Number is Up, by Taylor Kingston, PDF
2. Playing the Morphy Number Game, by Tim Harding, PDF
3. Tim Krabbé - see item #67
4. Frederick Rhine, Fun with Morphy Numbers
5. Barden's comments to Tim Harding, Playing the Morphy Number Game, chesscafe.com, 2010.
6. Edward Winter, Chess Note 6614, June 11, 2010. Retrieved on September 15, 2010.
7. Played James Mortimer in the City of London Championship of 1910/11.
8. Played James Mortimer in several City of London Championships from 1906 to 1910.
9. JM Aitken beat Savielly Tartakower at Southsea in 1949
10. Čeněk Kottnauer played Tartakower at the Staunton Memorial Tournament, Groningen 1946.
11. Played Ossip Bernstein at the 1961 IBM Amsterdam tournament.
12. Robert Wade played Savielly Tartakower twice, in 1951 (Staunton Memorial) and 1953 (Hastings). He also defeated Ossip Bernstein at the IBM Amsterdam tournament in 1961.
13. Played Eugene Znosko-Borovsky at Baam in 1947.

External links

• Chessgames.com
• Links to Kasparov (and others) by victories in a database