Morphy was famously averse/ambiguous to women.  He seemed to be genuinely afraid of the opposite sex.

I suppose it's possible that he had syphilis, but it usually takes about a decade for the disease to present itself in the form of delusions and behavior.  There is almost nothing to explain Morphy's erratic behavior before the Civil War.

Willempie wrote on 06/12/07 at 07:59:34:


Morphy after failing to get a match with Staunton wouldnt play proper chess. Only chess with odds. Failing to win the love of some girl and the failure of his law practice cos people cant see him as anything else but a chess player just accelerated the condition.

The syphillis case was Pillsbury. But I thought Steinitz had always been some kind of eccentric??

IMJohnCox wrote on 06/12/07 at 00:59:36:

Werent Morphy and Steinitz (due to syphilis I think) only deranged after they stopped playing?
For the likes of Capa, Lasker, Botters and Kasparov I think you can see similar behaviour with other sportsmen and in general succesful people. Even Pele when asked who was the best player ever answered: "Pele, Pele, Pele". Or for example Michael Jordan thinking he could play baseball and not to mention those scientists who think they are also experts in other fields.

I think the point is that Buenos Aires was the Olympiad interrupted by the war.

Actually I think that the champions have been reasonably down to earth for men at the pinnacle of a fiercely competitive intellectual profession. They don't compare particularly badly to top philosophers, for example. Only Morphy, Steinitz and Fischer were actually clinically deranged, I believe. Capablanca was certainly possessed of an unusual sense of his own position, but then as Smyslov Fan points out, he did have that position. Alekhine was famously difficult to deal with. Petrosian seems to have been a little bit crazy in his later years (if you believe Golombek's accounts of trying to be the arbiter at his matches, although to be sure HG was another with a fabulous opinion of himself), and Kasparov obviously is too. Lasker had delusions of intellectual adequacy in such fields as philosophy and playwriting, but after all such very considerable adequacy in two fields can have that effect on people. Botvinnik too evidently had a considerable opinion of himself and a personality which is curious at least to Western eyes. But the rest of them seem fairly normal. I suppose that means Euwe, Smyslov, Tal (at least he was obviously a drunk albeit with the usual associated charm, but apart from that), Spassky, Karpov and Kramnik.

Hmm. Perhaps six out of fourteen (or fifteen with Morphy) isn't that many after all.

Staunton also lacked what one might consider a normal sense of proportion.

MarinFan wrote on 06/11/07 at 10:25:20:


In his biograpy on Capa (written in cooperation with Euwe) GM Prins tells, how the great Cuban explains his plans for a rematch against Alekhine. Prins met Capablanca in Buenos Aires, during the Olympiad.
I would not call that down to earth.

Yes, I heard he was quite the womanizer. How bizarre for a chess player.  Suave...

MNb wrote on 06/10/07 at 21:16:43:

I think it is that one indeed. I remember that one very well as I was watching it with my grandparents and my granddad being a born and bred Amsterdammer knew most of the people in the docu.