Powerful Like a Storm

When the creative and indomitable Danish Grandmaster Bent Larsen wrote "A Personal Approach to the Openings" for the wonderful How To Open A Chess Game, he began the chapter by recalling that when he was 9 he found a chess book that inspired him, even if, he admitted, the text was 20 years old and the chess ideas of the author at least three times that aged. Larsen remembered an inspiring quote  

The Jerome Gambit is powerful like a storm; nobody can tame it. Nothing shows more clearly the lack of greatness in the chess professions of today than the fact that none of them have the courage to play the Jerome Gambit...

Oh, no, wait a minute, I got that wrong: the author was writing about the King's Gambit, not the Jerome...

perrypawnpusher  - badhorsey
blitz, FICS, 2011

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

4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Kf6

Shades of my game against Navarrra (see "Over").

7.Qf5+ Ke7 8.Qxe5+ Kf8

Staying out of further trouble.

9.Qxc5+ d6 10.Qe3 Nf6

White is two pawns up, with the safer King.

11.0-0 Qe7 12.Nc3 c5 13.d3 Kf7 14.b3

My opponent was using up a lot of thinking time on each move, so I decided to develop conservatively (using a formation that I borrowed from the b3 Sicilian) – to stay away from something bright, sharp, brilliant and wrong.

14...Rf8 15.Bb2 Kg8 16.Rae1 b6 17.f4 Ng4

Black has castled-by-hand, and with the exception of his Bishop (which I had expected to go to b7) his developement has progressed as well. The text move shows the irresistible temptation (which should, nonetheless, be resisted) to harass the Queen.

18.Qg3 Bd7 19.Nd5

From this point on, White's game becomes scarier and scarier (for Black).

19...Qd8 20.h3 Nf6 21.Nxf6+ Rxf6 22.Bxf6 Qxf6 23.e5 Qe6 24.f5 Qd5 25.e6 Bc6 26.f6

Those "Jerome pawns"!

26...g6 27.f7+ Kf8 28.e7+ Kg7 29.f8Q+ Rxf8 30.exf8Q checkmate