He defeated the best players of the US and. On his uncle’s initiation, he decided to challenge the best players of America in the 1857 Congress. He completed law before reaching the legal age of practicing law. Morphy s prowess created masterpieces of attacking chess so beautiful that they endure to the present. He started chess at the age of 10 and was already beating local masters by the age of twelve.
The Pride and Sorrow of Chess tells the full known story of the life of Paul Morphy, from his privileged upbringing in New Orleans to his dominance of the chess world, to the later tragedy of his demise. BOOK EXCERPT: Paul Charles Morphy (1837-84) was an extraordinary and precocious talent: a child prodigy who quickly rose to become the best player in America, and then the world, before he effectively retired from serious play at the age of 21. In this short and enjoyable chess book, you will find that Frisco Del Rosario has ripped over 60 of Morphy’s finest games to pieces so that you can learn from the master. Morphy's mental descent after retiring from chess became a part of his lore, made all the more magnanimous by a spate of twentieth-century examples. Paul Morphy was the first ever chess champion of America and his games were packed to the brim with brilliance and creativity. The strain of his fame and the pull of his domineering family led Morphy to set another precedent: chess madness. He was a shy, retiring lawyer who had been taught that such games were no way to make a living. Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess is the only full-length biography of Paul Morphy, the antebellum chess prodigy who launched United States participation in international chess and is still generally acknowledged as the greatest American chess player of all time.