Responding quickly to my question concerning the suspect Jerome Gambit game Amateur - Neumann, London, 1880 - almost identical to Amateur - Blackburne, London, 1884 - (see "Jerome Gambit History: Real?") - publisher McFarland and Company forwarded my query to Hans Renette, one of the authors of the forthcoming title, Neumann, Hirschfeld and Suhle19th Century Berlin Chess Biographies with 711 Games.
Mr. Renette was equally skeptical
Mr. Renette was equally skeptical
...I am pretty sure this game was not one played by Neumann (it is not in the book) and, very likely, is a variation of the Blackburne game. Neumann played his last known game in 1872 and afterwards fell into a mental oblivion - he spent the last years of his life in a mental clinic in East Prussia.
Accidently, this reminds me quite a lot of a game Bird - Pfander, which is at chessgames.com, allegedly played in 1903 (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1028251) - when Bird was out of public sight. This is game 512 in my book on Bird, and was played in 1879.For Readers, here is the game, a King's Gambit Accepted, Allgaier Gambit:
Henry Edward Bird - Pfander
England, 1879
1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.h4 g4 5.Ng5 h5 6.Bc4 Nh6 7.d4 f6 8.Bxf4 fxg5 9.hxg5 Nf7 10.g6 Ng5 11.Qd2 Nxe4 12.Bf7+ Ke7 13.Bg5+ Nxg5 14.Qxg5+ Kd6 15.Qc5 checkmate
My thanks to Mr. Renette - author, as well, of H.E. Bird: A Chess Biography with 1,198 Games and the forthcoming Louis Paulsen: A Chess Biography With 668 Games - and the good people at McFarland and Company.
