Saturday, June 2, 2018

Jerome Gambit: Again, Half a Defense

Sometimes it's just too easy to play the Jerome Gambit.

Often the quickest games are the ones that show the defender demonstrating a "scientific" idea - but only part-way. As we have seen many times on this blog, half a defense can be worse than no defense at all.

Still, White must find the right continuation.

Wall, Bill - Guest4377728
PlayChess.com, 2018

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ 



4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.d4 Bxd4 7.Qxd4 d6 



8.O-O h6

Black keeps his advantage after this move, but it seems overly cautious, and weakens the light squares around the King.

9.f4 c5 

Who hasn't heard the advice, if someone attacks one of your pieces, don't automatically move it, see if you can attack a more important piece  ? You can usually "trust" this advice, as long as you fulfill the other half of the obligation "trust - but verify".

In this game, Black has missed something very important.

(Surprisingly, there are 7 other games with this position in The Database. More spurprisingly, White was only 4-3 in those games. In only 2 of those games did White find the correct plan - and he was still only 1-1.)

10.fxe5+ 

Yes. The pawn captures with check.

10...Ke6 

Black would have still had a losing game after 10...Kg6, but if he wanted to hang around a bit longer, that was the move to make. Now, the end comes swiftly.

11.Qd5+ Kd7 12.Qxd6+ Ke8 13.Rf8 checkmate



Oh, man, that's gotta hurt...


No comments:

Post a Comment