More Musings

There is a nifty game over at Chris Torres' Chess Musings website (mentioned here earlier at "The Most Violent Chess Game Ever Played!" and "Another Lesson in the Jerome Gambit"). The post is titled "Useful Junk: The Jerome Gambit" which has the correct take on the opening:

Below is another interesting game where I played the Jerome Gambit against my student, Iddo Zohar. The Jerome Gambit is an unsound specialty of mine which I like to categorize as “useful junk.” Iddo Zohar is a very talented junior chess player who you will definitely here more about in future posts.

Check it out!

Toss 'Em in The Database

With some time available recently, I've downloaded more Jerome Gambit (and related) games from the FICS database, making The Database current through July 2012. That's still not "up to date," but I'm working on it...

Bill Wall is pulling together a database of his games for the year, and there's usually a few Jerome Gambits hiding there. The more, the merrier!

Also, I just caught up with the results of the 2nd Jerome Gambit Race at Chess.com. (The 1st Race was covered on this blog earlier this year.)

Rrustyy1                 6-2-0

oleppedersen           4-4-0

Jordi-I                     4-4-0

quixote                    3-4-1

DeDrijver               2-5-1

I hope to present games from this tournament soon.

(I noticed that DeDrijver played in the Chess.com "Play the Jerome Gambit Quad" posted about earlier.)


graphic from the Wizard of Draws

Turn About is Fair Play

I was doing some online research at the Chess Archaeology website when I ran into an interesting game (a cross between the Italian Game and the Petroff Defense) in the "Chess" column of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat for June 24, 1877

Amateur - Jos. N. B.

1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Bc5 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nxe5 Bxf2+ 5.Kxf2 Nxe4+ 6.Kf3 d5 7.Bd3 

At this point Black announced mate in two

Of course, I like the Bishop sacrifice theme (it is interesting to think of the game coming out of a Petroff, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Bc5!? 4.Bc4; or even a Busch-Gass Gambit 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Bc5!? 3.Nxe5 Nf6 ), even if it is performed this time by Black. 

Has this line appeared in a post in this blog before? I looked up 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Bc4 Bc5 and ran across it in "Not Quite the Jerome Gambit". Figures.

(By the way, Black does better to 4...0-0, and White should choose the safer 6.Kg1.)