A GM plays the Jerome Gambit ??

While Dr. Michael Goeller was filling me in on the reversed Blackburne Shilling Gambit (see "Through the Looking Glass: A Reversed BSG" and "Looking Deeper: the Reversed BSG") and working with his friend, Fritz, to temper my expectations (see "Reversed BSG: A Closer Look"), he dropped this bomb on me

I have seen [GM Larry] Christiansen venture your favorite Jerome Gambit in ICC blitz or simul games, but I'm not sure he really believes in it.

You can imagine my response! Grandmaster Larry "Storming the Barracades" Christiansen!? The Jerome Gambit??

As politely and calmly as possible (under the circumstances), I asked to see some of the games...

I began searching for LarryC games but ran into the dreaded "Game Database temporarily unavailable." But I turned up a couple before that kept happening...

I think he mostly does this as an interesting way to spot a weaker opponent a piece in online simuls.

Remembering now, he probably does it mostly via the C24 Bishop's Opening, which is how I stumbled upon the LarryC Jerome Gambit phenomenon -- while searching for Urusov Games, of course.

I will try to dig up some more this weekend, but anyone you know on ICC can find them with the search string "Search LarryC C24 White" etc.

I suggested that he look for Jerome Gambit games under C50 as well. I heard back from Dr. Goeller.

I spent some more time looking for LarryC games on ICC with the Bxf7 sac but couldn't find any more. I am not sure why, because I am certain I saw a bunch of them a couple years back while doing a search. It's possible that unrated games (such as simul games) are only temporarily available on the server and then vanish, even if played by LarryC.

In any case, there are very few C50 games at all, and none that really meet your criteria. And I only found the one C24 game I sent. It seems almost certain I saw them while searching through recent C24 games, which I do from time to time. It seems unlikely I was looking at C50 games. Started trying C21 and got Game Database currently unavailable. But the few I was able to go through did not look promising.

So sorry to get your hopes up and then disappoint... But at least you have one game. I'll keep an eye out for more.

In all, Dr. Goeller sent me two games, which we will look at in future posts.