A Few Words With... Tim McGrew

Readers interested in the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) and other exciting opening sacrifices are likely familiar – or should become familiar – with Tim McGrew, past author of "The Gambit Cartel" columns for ChessCafe.

Tim has always been supportive of my work with the duck-billed platypus of chess openings, although he maintains an objective attitude:

The Jerome is, of course, completely unsound; it is a kind of miracle, and a tribute to Jerome’s tenacity, that it was analyzed seriously at all.

I was planning to do a short interview with Tim, when I discovered that Michael Goeller, host of The Kenilworthian blog, had already done so, and in great style.

Check it out. Michael said it was fine to make the link.

Pour yourself a cup of coffee first, though. You'll not only find the interview, you'll find links to all of Tim's "Gambit Cartel" columns plus a downloadable zipped file of them. And, as they say in the commercials: But wait! There's more!

I'll wait for you to come back...

Here's some of Tim McGrew's wisdom on adventurism in the opening

When you select an opening, you are not selecting the position that arises at move 20 after best play by both sides. You are selecting the whole opening with all of its traps and twists, its side lines and main lines.

And you are selecting it to play against flesh-and-blood opponents who will very frequently deviate from best play – probably early.

Which raises a very important question, supposing they do deviate from best play, what will happen then?

The answer depends on what I will call the “Caltrop Coefficient,” or CC for short. For readers not familiar with military history, I should explain that caltrops are mid-sized pieces of metal shaped rather like gigantic jacks with sharpened points. Canny soldiers camping just on the other side of a river from their enemies would sow the riverbed liberally with caltrops so that an enemy cavalry charge across the river would be demolished as the horses stepped on the caltrops and went down.

Mutatis mutandis, every wild-eyed gambiteer uses this strategy in chess as well. The more caltrops the better, particularly at blitz or bullet time controls! Let’s agree to say that an opening with a high proportion of moderately well-hidden traps has a high CC.

Of course, if our opponent has studied up on the opening, life will be very hard.

--The Gambit Cartel "Dimensional Analysis" 6/20/2004

graphic by Jeff Bucchino, "The Wizard of Draws"