In a recent post titled "The Giuoco Piano a/k/a C50 in ECO terms" Jan mentioned my search for women who -- for whatever reasons -- had played the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+). As for the opening itself, she wrote...
My response was to quote from Emanuel Lasker in the December 1907 issue of Lasker’s Chess MagazineI had a vague idea that it must have something to do with chess but for some unknown reason "go fish" pops into my mind whenever I read the words "Jerome's Gambit."
[Ah, Jan you are too cruel. Spot on about the Jerome Gambit -- but cruel. - R.K.]
The other thing "Jerome's Gambit" conjures up is a memory from my murky past long long ago, on a planet far far away...of a street hustler named Boney Jerome who used to hold court on the steps outside the apartment building where I lived at the time.Boney Jerome tried to lure me into an "unspecified relationship" by attempting to bribe me with large gold and cubic zirconia rings (the gold was probably as fake as the stones), which I always rejected with a sweet smile.
He eventually gave up on me, declaiming to all in the neighborhood that I was way too smart and sassy-mouthed for my own good, always throwing quotes from Shakespeare at him. For my part, I was impressed that Boney Jerome knew the name Shakespeare.
... The artistic conscience sometimes makes him who has it a coward – or, let us say, a Hamlet of the chess board.
I wonder if Hamlet was a chessplayer. From his character it seems indeed likely. If he was, he probably played a weak but imaginative game, with a craving to improve upon the best move and therefore often missing it.
Hamlets of the chess board are frequent types. Once in the meshes of combination they lose themselves in its intricacies, and evolve ideas that are so infinitely subtle that they have no vitality. Then is the moment when fate, usually with a somewhat brutal, matter-of-fact blow, wakes them out of their dreams.
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Hamlet would have been better off if he had gone fishing instead of getting so caught up in his "artistic" tendencies that ended in his strangling Ophelia. Wouldn't happen today - Ophelia would bean him over the head with a chessboard and run off with Lasker, who at least made some money doing something other than playing chess and did not stand around moaning and groaning to a skull. As the pampered wife of a wealthy man, Ophelia would take lessons on the pianoforte and learn the intracacies of the Octave and the five-finger spread. Adapted to chess, this means "keep your itchy fingers off your queen, sucka" until at least move 20.
Now I must go back to studying about Georgian goddesses of old; I want to see if I can pick up a few curses to hurl at modern-day barbarians dressed as Russian soldiers.
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