Who is better Paul Morphy or Magnus Carlsen

Was Morphy alive when this forum was started?

Looks like the question has been answered: Morphy was better while he was alive; Carlsen has been better since he was alive.

"Chess is eminently and emphatically a game for the living."

what is "better"?

A live person will beat a dead person every time.

However if they both were alive now Carlsen would wipe Morphy out because Morphy would be age 176 and past his prime.

To most people the statements "I like Player A more than I like Player B" and "Player A plays better chess than Player B" seem to be synonyms :-)

Quiet logical

well in the 1800s there were no computers or internet so he was not alive when this started

Lets imagine that Morphy and Carlsen would play chess against each other. Hence, Morphy would be 176 years old and still playing chess! He would be a tremendously experienced player. Beyond any imagination.

If he would still be alive, he would wipe Carlsen off the board. Unless he had Alzheimer of course.

he died of a brain tumor(i read this in How to Play Winning Chess)

so his brain was destroyed i suppose so he couldn't think

Savage

Good point. 

well morphys endgame and opening is worst than carlsens

@rainuchka: what you see as an answer, is for other people just one of the many perspectives. What you see in this thread is that a lot of people are adding one of the many possible perspectives on this question. A lot of those views are incompatible with each other. Some bear insights, others have interesting points, others are merely jokes or argumentations to show how impossible it is to compare. Posts #225 and #227 are examples of the latter. I think they are more realistic than your answer.

rainuchka has left already though

Thought you left forever

Rainuchka, we're all entitled to our opinions but I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.  In Basic Positional Ideas Jacob Aagard chastized Efim Bogolubov for his weak positional understanding despite being a top player... and he was a couple generations ahead of Morphy.  One of Lasker's best games found in Shereshevsky's Endgame Strategy had him salvage a draw against Bogolubov in a seemingly hopeless position, Bogolobov dominated the d-file with his rooks yet Lasker found the draw with his rook and two minors... and only had rook and knight pawns left. 

you said you were leavi ng

Agreed Bogoliubov would win, and Aagard noted he made weak moves by today's standards.  Imagine the holes he'd note in Morphy's play?  Heck, even I saw Morphy's Bxc4? was bad in the game where Anderssen beat him in a reversed Paulsen as that left Anderssen with a lightsquared bishop without a counterpart, enabling him to keep the defender of his weak light squares.  By that point the game resembled more of a reversed stonewall Dutch.

@Rainuchka: Of course are there lists of the relative strength of famous chess players based on evaluation of their games by engines. Watcha has written about such an evaluation recently.

It is a nice try in my opinion, but it is not fair to the old masters of chess. They will always come out weaker than they are. The reason that chess engines can play so well (and the current GMs too) is that they stand on the shoulders of the previous giants. You can't ignore the fact that Carlsen is playing in the post Steinitz era. Would Karpov become WC if he would have lived in the time of Steinitz and Zukertort? Would he be the person that discovered positional play? Impossible questions to answer.