Morphy's Opera Game: how two amateurs lost in 17 moves

At the Chess Club Showdown on 30 September, 4,400 players shared one arena. Chess.com quotes a 1300-rated player entering their first online tournament whose third opponent was Magnus Carlsen. The Opera Game is the old version of that story: an American master against two amateurs who chose their moves together.

Paul Morphy played it in October or November 1858 at the Salle Ventadour in Paris, from a box while an opera was on stage. Wikipedia notes that historians disagree on which opera. It was a consultation game: Karl II, Duke of Brunswick, and Count Isouard chose Black's moves together, and Morphy played White alone. It lasted 17 moves.

The evaluation climbs almost the whole way. White is +0.3 after 1.e4, +2.1 after 6...Nf6, +3.3 after 9...b5, +5.6 after 10...cxb5 and +6.0 by move 14. The biggest single drop for Black is 11.8 points of win chance. Nothing in it is a blunder; Black simply never catches up.

Morphy (White)

98.8%

Duke and Count (Black)

81.6%

Material is exactly level here, 35 points each. Everything else is not. 6...Nf6 already costs about 7 points of win chance; the engine would have played 6...Qf6. Then 7.Qb3 attacks f7 and b7 at once, Black defends with 7...Qe7, and White goes on developing.

9...b5 is the one that Wikipedia describes as a strong sacrifice to keep the initiative, one that loses but where it is hard to find better. The engine does find a better move, 9...Na6, which loses about 11 points less. Then 10.Nxb5, which Steinitz called the first link in a beautiful combination, is simply the engine's best move. Black took it with 10...cxb5, and the engine prefers 10...Qb4+, which declines the knight.

16.Qb8+ is the only move of the game our grader labels brilliant: it is the best move, our grader counts it as an only move, and it gives away a queen. It is also a mate in two, so for an engine it is easy. The idea is beautiful and the calculation is short.

The sacrifice is what people remember, but it was only available because Morphy had developed every piece and Black had not. If you take one thing from this game, take that: before you look for tactics, count the pieces each side has in the game, and ask where the kings are.

How this was measured: the same Stockfish 18 build this site's analyser runs, at depth 16 on every move and depth 24 on the 24 moves that lost the most ground. Scores are in pawns from White's side. Another engine, depth or computer will move individual numbers a little; the shape of the game stays the same.