Morphy's King's Gambit Duel

Paul Morphy travelled to Europe in 1858 hoping to play the continent's strongest masters, and the biggest prize was Adolf Anderssen, the reigning star of the Immortal and Evergreen games. Anderssen agreed to a match at the Hotel de Breteuil in Paris that December, and in this game, played on 29 December, both men tested each other in the King's Gambit, the sharpest and most fashionable opening of the era.

Anderssen accepts the gambit pawn and grabs a second one with 3...g5 and 4...g4, chasing Morphy's knight, but Morphy sacrifices a rook outright with 8...Nxh1, leaving his own king exposed in exchange for a ferocious attack on Anderssen's king, which is still stuck in the centre. The complications run for another dozen moves, both kings walking into the open, until Morphy's queen and bishop combine to force resignation with 23.Qa4+, since Anderssen has no way to block the check without losing more material to what follows.

Morphy went on to win the match convincingly. This particular game is a useful lesson in the King's Gambit's real cost: material sacrificed for attack only works if the attacker keeps finding the next threat, and here Morphy simply calculates further and faster than the man who had, until that point, been considered the strongest attacking player alive.