Club Player's Opening

The Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) is a club player's opening. That's who plays it, that's who analyzes it (with a few exceptions, like NM Eric Schiller and IM Gary Lane), that's who improves it and that's who finds ways to stymie it.

Part of the excitement of the opening for me is the way players can put a personal touch on it. Pete Banks ("blackburne") has popularized the Banks Variation (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Kf8 6.Qh5) and continues to win with it, even after mika76 at Gameknot.com put forth a refutation.

Lt. G.N. Whistler may have invented Whistler's Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ g6 7.Qxe5 Qe7) but Brian Wall and Tyrin Price much more recently showed how dangerous it was.

It is always great fun for me too play through games in my database and look for individualized interpretations, from viejoasquerosos's predeliction for playing Bc4 and Bxf7+ (or ...Bc5 and ...Bxf2+) at the earliest possible moment, in any opening, to equally inventive ideas like in the following game.

weenar - Quixote
blitz, FICS, 2000

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+


4...Kxf7 5.Ng1

Wow... weenar decides that the essence of the Jerome Gambit is displacing the King, followed by a Queen check. In what has to be the most outrageous of the "modern" lines, this check is prepared without further sacrifice.

Other retrograde lines that I can think of offhand are 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Ng8 and 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5 3.exf5 followed by Ng1.
5...Qf6 6.Qh5+
True to the main idea, although 6.Nf3 may have been stronger.

6...g6 7.Qg4
The Queen, mindful of such lines as 1.e4 e5 2.f4 Qh4+ 3.g3 Qe7, etc., should have retreated to e2.

7...Qxf2+ 8.Kd1 Qf1 checkmate
Admittedly, that didn't go too well.
It has been said that opening innovations will lose the first and last time they are played; the former because they are not quite understood, the latter because they are understood too well. In between the two? That's where the excitiement is.