Paul Charles Morphy was an American chess player. During his brief career in the late 1850s Morphy was acknowledged as the world's greatest chess master.

Chess is a board game for two players, each controlling a set of chess pieces. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games such as xiangqi and shogi. The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. The rules of chess as they are known today emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, with standardization and universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, and is played by millions of people worldwide.