The Jerome Gambit: Jerome Gambit: How He Did It

Saturday, December 12, 2020

Jerome Gambit: How He Did It

So, how do you beat the Beth Harman bot at Chess.com?

Well, I have already pointed you to an enjoyable video of the game where Jonathan Schrantz used the Jerome Gambit to defeat "her".

I thought it would be useful to go over the game, and point out a few of the relevant ideas.

Schrantz, Jonathan - Harman (22) bot, Beth

blitz, Chess.com, 2020

Jonathan Schrantz has challenged a number of bots, using unorthodox openings successfully against them. For this game, he noted

...I am going to try to beat Beth Harmon with the worst opening in all of chess. I am going to try to take her down with the Jerome Gambit... Beth is actually going to be the weakest engine that I have played.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+

4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Kf8

Interesting. Apparently Beth is some form of the Stockfish engine. I have Stockfish 11, and it prefers 6...Ke6 here, a move that was likely attractive to the earliest of chess computers, as those beasts tended to grab material and then try to hang on, come what may; in this case Stockfish 11 may just see through the tactics and prefer the move.

Quite possibly, 6...Kf8 is "book", which would be a very reasonable choice.

7.Qxe5 d6 8.Qg3 Kf7 9.c3

Central to Schrantz's strategy.

9...Nf6 10.d4 Bb6 11.f3 Be6

Schrantz noted: "I'm going to create the shrine pawn structure. Maybe it looks like a mountain to you. I'm just saying I'm down a piece but I've got this solid wall in front of me and I'm going to pray at the shrine in my little temple that I can somehow hold this position together 'cause really it shouldn't work but maybe if we get lucky, maybe if we're prepared for this battle, she will hopefully overextend. I'm just going to play some sensible moves, get castled, develop my pieces,and hope that she overextends on the kingside."

There's a lot to look at here.

Over the years, on this blog, I have presented a number of human vs human games where White constructs the triangle of pawns d3-e4-f3 and then waits for Black to do something with his Knight-for-2-pawns advantage. While Black is transitioning from defender to attacker, White takes small steps to creep up on him...

But, Schrantz's "shrine" pawn structure, is that new? I thought so, but when I checked with The Database, I did a search and found 856 games with the pawns set at c3-d4-e4-f3. Hmmmm....

So I added the Black Bishop at b6, the Black pawn at d6, and the White Queen at g3, to better refine my search through The Database. I found 30 games. Not a lot, but still a number of predecessors.

So I added the Black King at f7 to the position for my search, and found 6 games. Equally important, White scored 2 - 4 in those games. Schrantz was making an interesting contribution to Jerome Gambit - and he was just getting started.

By the way, a quick search of The Database showed that 8...Kf7 was a novelty. The idea of moving the King up to facilitate castling-by-hand is part of much of defensive strategy against the Jerome Gambit, but I found it interesting that with over 15,700 games with 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+, Black could still come up with a novelty on move 8.

What next? Well, Schrantz obviously knew something about Beth's quirks

She actually has this tendency against the Jerome Gambit to go kind of wild on the kingside. That's what we are looking forward to.

12.a4 c6 13.O-O h6

14.Be3 g5

As foretold.

15.f4

To open the f-file, where the enemy King is standing.

15...Bc4

Save the Bishop - in case White gets in f4-f5 - and threaten to win the exchange. But the human is ready.

16.Nd2 Bxf1 17.Rxf1

White is down a Rook for a couple of pawns, but he is probably better. At any rate, his position is full ideas.

17...g4

To close off the f-file.

18.e5 Re8

White's attack looks dangerous.

Stockfish 11 suggests that Black complicate things, so that White will eventually sue for peace by repeating the position, i.e. 18...Qd7 19.exf6 Qf5 20.Bf2 Rhg8 21.Nc4 Bc7 22.d5 c5 23.b4 b6 24.Qh4 Qxf6 25.Qh5+ Qg6 26.Qh4 Qf6 etc.

I can't see a human taking Stockfish 11's advice.

19.Nc4 Bc7 20.exf6 Rg8

I suspect that the Rook was just trying to be helpful, but the better way to protect the advanced g-pawn was 20...h5.

21.Ne5+

Many of us will play a lot of games without finding a move as enjoyable as this one.

21...dxe5 22.fxe5

Those connected, passed "Jerome pawns" look formidible. Black's next move looks like the kind of thing that engines play when they are "handicapped" to make a less challenging opponent; sometimes the program just cuts down on its "thinking" time, sometimes it randomly distributes mistaken play. But this was the Beth bot playing at her top ability, a rating on the site of 2700.

22...a5