A Slice of Jerome Gambit

My thanks to Welton Vaz, Jerome Gambit Gemeinde member from Brazil, for sending the Jerome Gambit (and related) games from FICS for June, 2011.

I looked at the games a bit closer, and made some interesting discoveries.

There was a total of 109 games with the move order 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ played at FICS in June.

White won 44 games, lost 63, and drew twice, scoring 41%, which is about what I have found when I have studied other collections of Jerome Gambit games. (The statistics tool from ChessBase indicated that the Whites had slightly underperformed, playing at about 30 rating points below their average.)

Interestingly enough, according to The Database, 2/3 of the players facing the Jerome Gambit at FICS in June had already defended against it at least one time before (low, once; high forty). The opening, it seems, is getting around, and is much less often a surprise than I would have thought.

When playing an opponent new to the Jerome Gambit (at least according to The Database) White scored 46%. That was a bit better than when playing an opponent with some experience with the Jerome, when White scored 39%.

Although some players offered "Jerome Gambit odds" to those rated less than themselves, this was not the standard in this game sample: White was the higher-rated player in only 40% of the games. More often, the Jerome Gambit was played against equals or higher-rated opponents.

Still, it must be noted that when giving "Jerome Gambit odds" White scored 55%.

Not surprisingly, in 64 of the games in the June pool, (59 %) the higher rated player won.

Or should that number have been higher? Was the Jerome Gambit introducing some chaos into the predictions? 

In any event, if Black was the higher-rated player in 60% of the games, and the higher-rated players won about 60% of their games, it should not be surprising that White won only about 40% of the games...