The Return of Jerome Gambit for Dummies (Part 3)

Continuing my search for the "essence" of the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+), or at least an insight into how it "works" (see Part 1 and Part 2) I examined The Database for games of a half-dozen moves in length.

For the most part, as might be expected, the footnote to most of White's 6-move wins was "White won on time". Opponents were either dazzled, shocked, bored, distracted or offended... and went on to other things. An exception was the following game

Perfesser - Talking LCD Chess (1 ply)
casual game at home, 2003
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Kf6 1-0

More about this game and the match between these two opponents can be found at "Jerome Gambit and The Perfesser" Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

After six moves in the game, White can recover his sacrificed pieces, playing 7.Qf5+ Ke7 8.Qxe5+ and then either 9.Qxc5+ or 9.Qd5+ and 10.Qxc5, depending on Black's 8th move.

This looks very good for the first player, although I have to point out that White lost 8 of 32 games (after 6...Kf6) in The Database, including the very embarassing perrypawnpusher - chingching, blitz, FICS, 2011.

Although White White's main enemy in 6-move games remained the clock, about one third of those "0-1"s were the result of 5.Ng5+ (see "The Return of Jerome Gambit for Dummies, Part 2").

There was also the first appearance of a new kind of obstacle, one that I had bemoaned a couple of years ago in "A Sneaky Way to Defeat the Jerome Gambit"

Chainbk - zdveslo
blitz, FICS, 2010
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Black wins by ajudication