Post Script

Spend any time at a book store looking at its selection of chess titles and you will probably run into at least one book offering Play X and Win! – with "X" being the particular opening that the author is enthusiastic about. Thumb through the volume and you will be convinced that you have to play X!

Wander down the book shelf, however, and  you may well encounter Play X and Be Destroyed!, the effort of another author (or, perhaps, the same one) to convince you that playing X is the road to ruin!

If your book store has a very comprehensive chess section, even further down the book shelf will be Smashing the Destroyers of X!, and perhaps even the hot-off-the-presses response, Crushing the Smashers of the Destroyers of X!

As Ken Smith wrote in a series of pamphlets on the Blackmar Diemer Gambit

For every White initiative a better defense always seems to present itself for Black, and for every refutation the Black side recommends improvements are found for White.

How much easier it is with the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+)! As early as the July 1874 Dubuque Chess Journal its editor put the opening in proper perspective

and White has a pawn ahead

Note: It should be understood that Mr. Jerome claims in this New Opening "only a pleasant variation of the Giuoco Piano, which may win or lose according to the skill of the players, but which is capable of affording many new positions and opportunities for heavy blows unexpectedly."