Death of a Variation

DREWBEAR 63's only loss to date in the ongoing Jerome Gambit Thematic Tournament at ChessWorld came with the White pieces against his primary rival, Daves111, under unclear circumstances.

DREWBEAR 63 - Daves111
Jerome Gambit Thematic Tournament, ChessWorld, 2010

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

4...Kxf7 5.Ng5+

Outrageous, even by Jerome Gambit standards. On the surface, White hopes to exchange his Knight for Black's Bishop at c5 – but the game quickly becomes too chaotic for that.

I was astonished to find 254 games with this move in the updated New Year's Database. White scored 21%, which seems fortunate for the first player, to me.

The earliest examples that I have of the line are a quartet of losses by TlFoZl in play at FICS in 1999, but I am sure the idea has been tried previously. (It is fun to report that when Carlos Azcarate won the 2008 Ninja Knights T3 Jerome Gambit Tournament at ChessWorld, with 19 wins and 5 losses, he did so with the "help" of the 5.Ng5 variation, scoring 1 win and 4 losses.)

What was DREWBEAR 63 thinking? Did he expect to bamboozle his opponent at the outset?

Perhaps he simply mis-played the move. In three other games in the current tournament DREWBEAR 63 played the "Wright attack" (named after the game Wright - Hunn, Arkansas, USA, 1874, scoring 37% in the New Year's Database) with 5.d4 exd4 6.Ng5+ and scored 3 wins.

5...Qxg5 6.d4

The "point" of the variation. Sadly, White's best, instead, was 6.0-0, with one pawn as compensation for two pieces sacrificed.

6...Qxg2 7.Rf1 Qxe4+ 8.Qe2 Qxe2+ 9.Kxe2 Nxd4+ 10.Kd1 d6 11.f3 Bh3

White resigned.

This game bears no resemblance to the rest of DREWBEAR 63's play in the tournament!