Looking Backwards

This is my 636th consecutive daily post. I would like to think that I remember everything on this Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) blog, but clearly I have forgotten some things.

The other day I was looking back at my earlier posts and I found an amusing thread that has worked its way forward.

Remember the line 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Ke6 from perrypawnpusher - johnde, blitz FICS, 2010?

In my post "Stinking up the Chessboard" I mentioned that I had covered this rare move earlier this year in "A Strange, But Intriguing, Path (Part 1)", "(Part 2)" and "(Part 3)".

This closer look came because I had done an Opening Report on the New Year's Database and concluded about 5...Ke6 that it "needs more analysis on behalf of White."

That was not my first encounter with the move, however. At the end of June, 2009, in analyzing the game blackburne - DREWBEAR 63, JGTourney4 ChessWorld, 2009 I had commented on it.

DREWBEAR 63's move [5...Ke6] comes as quite a shock – certainly it must have been played before, perhaps in the earliest days of the Jerome Gambit; but there are no games in my database with the move, no analysis, and not even a mention of it.

Of course, that was before I had access to the gazillion game database of FICS games, and before the advent of the New Year's Database.

Also, I hadn't looked in my own blog, where, about a year earlier, in a note to my analysis of  Blackstone - Dommeyer skittles game, California, USA 1960, I had written

Of course, if you opponent springs the "Theoretical Novelty" 5...Ke6 on you, you'll be prepared with 6.Qg4+ Kxe5 7.d4+ Bxd4 8.Bf4+ Kf6 9.Bg5+ Kf7 10.Bxd8 Nxd8 (or 10...Bxb2 11.Qf3+ Ke8 12.Bxc7 Bxa1 13.Nd2 – a mess, but Black's uncertain King gives White the edge) and although the position is roughly even Black may not recover from "losing" his Queen.

All is new that has been forgotten...