Monday, September 7, 2020

Jerome Gambit: Oops, He Did It Again?!

Chessfriend Yury Bukayev pointed out to me that Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura ("SanitationEngineer") played another 3 0 Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) game against Grandmaster Dmitrij Kollars ("GM_dmitrij") at Chess.com. While the result was the same ("1-0") the underlying reasons are not as clear...

By the way, Ahmed Amayem emailed me a link to a short, light-hearted discussion between GM Nakamura and IM Levy Rozman about the Jerome Gambit and the games against GM Kollars. Check it out, from minute 51:30.

Oh, and GM Nakamura, in assembling an "Intermediate Opening Tier List", bypassed "Legendary", "Solid", "Legit", and "Maybe Not", to place the Jerome Gambit in "Tricks Only" - above "Garbage" because, as he said, "I don't think it loses by force".


SanitationEngineer - GM_dmitrij

3 0 blitz, Chess.com, 2020

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ 

4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Ke6 

7.Qf5+ Kd6 8.f4 Qh4+ 9.g3 Qf6 10.fxe5+ Qxe5  


So far, the same as their previous encounter, but now White decides not to exchange Queens.

11.Qf3 Qf6 

According to The Database, this move is a novelty.

12.Qe2 Ke7 13.c3 d6 14.d4 Bb6 

15.Bf4 Qg6 16.O-O Bh3 17.Rf2 Re8 18.a4 a6 19.Nd2  


At this point the website noted "SanitationEngineer won - game abandoned".

It is unclear why this happened - Black has an extra piece for a pawn, and must be better, despite his somewhat uneasy King. Perhaps the non-chess world intervened, as it occasionally does. 



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