A First Book of Morphy

by Frisco Del Rosario

A First Book of Morphy illustrates basic principles of chess with more than 60 brilliant and instructive games played by the first American chess champion, Paul Morphy.

Genres: Chess, Nonfiction, Reference, Games

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[JM]

This is not a book about Morphy; it is a Primer. It's proper to pronounce "primer" as primmer.
Del Rosario is a rare fowl; a sub-master chess author. His current effort examines Reuben Fine's 30 chess axioms through the lens of (mostly) Paul Morphy games. It's an interesting and not altogether failing concept. Unfortunately, Fine's best years were in the 1930's and he never quite seemed to catch the hyper-modern fever; he loved occupied centers and dry provincial development. It's still a reasonable foundational work even though it lacks the dynamism we've come to expect from players of his era. It makes sense that Morphy’s unsophisticated (yet occasionally brilliant) games would showcase Fine's maxims.

[Chrissy Prince]

Awesome book for beginners. 10 tips for the opening, middlegame, and endgame using Morphy's games as examples. He won most of his matches playing blindfolded at odds against total cans. What an absolute unit. Giving it 5 stars even though there are occasional errors in notation.

[Ian Mullet]

paul morphy - some people consider him to be the greatest chess player ever. born and raised in new orleans.

[FranklinTV]

Nice idea and a nice book - - I would study in detail if I ever finish my basic chess books.

[Héctor Otero]

3.5 ★

A great starter collection of Morphy's games. The games are great but the annotations are nowhere close to the deserved quality.

The games are set around a basic set of Opening, Middlegame and Endgame principles, however, the annotations fail to communicate in an equally beginner-friendly manner. Definitely not as good as Logical Chess Move by Move in that sense.

Additionally, the lack of signs (+, #, !, !!, !?, ?!) make it annoyingly harder to read for no real reason. Note that even if you can visualise up to an intermediate level, you definitely need a board to go through the games. In any case, more diagrams would have also been great.

All of this has made me put down and pick up the book again many times, taking me a total of almost 3 years to finish it since I bought it.

[Ali Shuttleworth]

Reuben Fine's 30 chess principles demonstrated through games of Paul Morphy. 10 each for Opening, Middlegame and Endgame. Contains just shy of 70 annotated games. Considering the quantity and quality of information you get for your time and money it's hard to get better value. The playing style might be a bit romantic for the modern player and maybe you can do it if you're as good as Morphy, but the principles are there. Probably of less value the more experienced you already are, but ideal as you learn how to play the game.

[Xenophon]

A great resource on Chess principles. Rosario isn't the most gifted story-teller (the exciting Opera Game somehow falls flat unless you really visualize). Nevertheless, the games are well-selected and the principles really stick with some extra pearls thrown in here and there.

I'm a hobbyist/snail-pace improver and I found a lot to like about this book. Will definitely play through the games again.

[Doug]

Wonderful little book with 10 principles in each of the three phases of the game! There is discussion of each principle followed by some Morphy games to demonstrate the principle! Very nicely done and certainly any new player or intermediate player will learn something! I enjoyed it a lot! 😎♟

[Hector]

Paul morphy’s games are very instructive, but the author’s annotations are useless. He’ll rattle off several moves and then the annotations will say nothing except maybe list possible variations. Trash. For a book with fantastic annotations check out “logical chess: move by move.”

[G]

3.75 - Morphy's games were incredible. The analysis was generally good, however there were a small number of occasions where it wasn't great, and there were a few spelling/grammatical errors which gave a bit of a poor impression.

[Nathan Grace]

An excellent book to read for chess players of every level, whether to learn or to relive classic matches from Paul Morphy’s short career. Really great to follow along with a board for every move as well.

[Joe Hyatt]

Gift from Dad. First chess book I ever finished cover to cover