1. Our Mission

The purpose of The Morphy File (TMF) is to seek improvements to the set of game scores attributed to chess master Paul Morphy (1837-1884). An improvement to the accuracy of a game will fall into one of four categories:

1. Proof that the game is spurious, that is, not played by Paul Morphy.


2. Corrections to the name of Morphy's opponent. This includes the spelling, supplying a full name and indentifying an unknown player.


3. Correct dating of the game.


4. Corrections to the score.

The generally acknowledged full set of Morphy games was finally published in Paul Morphy and the Evolution of Chess Theory by Macon Shibut (Caissa Editions, 1993). Initially, even that book missed 52 games which were later included as a supplement. A paperback edition (Dover,2004) with a complete set of games is now available Morphy by Shibut. Often, I will identify a game by its Shibut number, i.e., "Shibut 232", refers to the famous opera house game.

A pgn of the full set of Morphy games is available at Morphy PGN . I will call this file the CKR file after the person who labored long and hard to assemble it. All the Shibut numbers are in the CKR file. Some of the corrections that we will discuss have already been applied to the CKR file but there is some additional information which I would like to document. Be sure to visit the rest of the SBC site for all things Morphy.