Sunday, September 25, 2011

Sunday Tournament Update

The ChessWorld Jerome Gambit Thematic Tournament is underway, all 15 competitors and all 210 games!

We are already seeing results (8 completed games so far, 6 wins by White) from AsceticKingK9, mckenna215, Rikiki00, braken, blackburne, DREWBEAR 63, Knight32, Magni, pixifrufru, shm19cs, klonka59, Baron wd von Blanc heart pirate, martind1991, Luke Warm and Haroldlee123.

Many games are in their early stages, others are racing along.

There are a number of examples of the Jerome Gambit Declined (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kf8/Ke7) a relatively rare beast making up only about 9/10th-of-a-percent of the games in The Database those certainly will expand our understanding of that line.

At least 29% of the games are "classical" Jerome Gambits, with 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7+ followed by 5.Nxe5+, which is the highest percentage that I have seen in a recent Jerome Gambit thematic tournament. Some "well established" theory is likely to be stood on its head by the time those games are done!

With about 7 out of 10 games following "modern" (non-5.Nxe5+ lines) there will be plenty of practice to round out the theory of this more tempered approach as well.

Next Sunday I will give further information on the progress of the tournament. When all games have developed far enough for me not to influence their play, I will begin presenting some with annotations.

(By the way, I predict that the tournament winner will score 24 out of 28 points.)

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