I have been a bit busy lately, so this email hit me by surprise:
Dear Rick, how do you do! My warmest congratulations with 10 years of your nice blog!!! It's an enormous and a noble work! Thank you a lot for it!!! I'm going to post congratulations on my Facebook-page "Newchessrevolution Bukayev" too.Best wishes!Yury
Wow! That's right. June 10, 2008 was the date of the first post on this blog.
For the record, the next post will be number 2,600.
And Yury has been contributing ideas and support for at least 8 years, if my figuring is correct. Many, many thanks!
A profound "Thank You!" to all Readers, and especially those who have contributed analysis, games and ideas, over the last decade.
I play chess. I do not play golf. My guess is that facing a "refuted" chess opening in chess - say, the Jerome Gambit - is kind of like hitting a long shot to the green in golf. In the end, you still have to sink the putt. Likewise, even against 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+, Black has to still go on and finish the "win".
The following game is yet another example of Black coming up short.
Wall, Bill - Guest5607084
PlayChess.com, 2018
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+
4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.d4 Qh4
An excellent response, very much like a pie in the face. (You can tell it is strong, as, in 33 games, Bill has scored "only" 86%.)
7.O-O Ng4
Wow. Looks scary.
8.h3 N4f6 9.dxc5 d6
Opening a line for another piece to enter the attack.
10.cxd6 cxd6 11.Nd2 Qh5 12.Nf3
12...Ne8
A move that is difficult to comprehend. I would guess that Black originally planned 12...Nxe4, but at the last moment saw that the move would be well met by 13.Ng5+. Still...
13.Ng5+ Kg6
14.g4 Qh4 15.e5
15...h6 16.Qd3+ Bf5 17.Qxf5 checkmate
Nyuk nyuk nyuk...
Earlier this year I posted a game - see "Jerome Gambit: Two English Amateurs" - from R.M. Baird's May 11, 1901 "OVER THE CHESSBOARD" column in The Evening Star.
It turns out that the game had appeared earlier, in the March 17, 1899 chess column (by Samuel Tinsley) in the Kentish Mercury.
It is also quite possible (see "Violet Apple The Life and Works of David Lindsay) that the player of the white pieces was David Lindsay, an early fantasy and science fiction writer (A Voyage to Arcturus [1920], The Haunted Woman [1922], Sphinx [1923], Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly [1926], Devil's Tor [1932]) who appears to have influenced C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien.
There is something "right" about the Jerome Gambit being played by someone caught up in fiction and fantasy.
Things move slowly in the "Italian Battleground" tournament at Chess.com. By my count, there are 11 games to be completed - although 2 of those cannot be started until a couple of ongoing ones are finished. Still, it is possible to identify those in each group who will move on.
In Group 1 there are a couple of games to complete, but Marek_Sturmvogel, warwar and Iliwo will make it to round two.
Group 2, with two games to go, will see perrypawnpusher (that's me), JohnDuh2 and Abhishek29 move on to the next round.
Group 3 will see 275Jukka, manospawn and either thejamch, Alfonso10, Tarongrig or Asdksafa (yes, that is everyone else) progress. Seven yet-to-be-finished games keep that third spot in competition.
In Group 4, xtfabio, vasbur and XristosGikas will make it to round 2.
