Jerome Gambit: This "Refuted" Thing (Part 2, What to Do?)

 

[continued from previous post]

So - what do you do, if your favorite opening is not appreciated by grandmasters or chess computers?

Of course, the easiest thing is to do nothing. Win. Lose. Draw. Set the pieces up again. Play some more. No need to get excited. It's only a game. A few minutes after you leave the board, it's all forgotten.

Similarly, if you are having success with the Jerome Gambit against humans, but are getting crushed by computers - don't play against computers. Some people like the challenge (see "Beating Beth Harmon With the Worst Opening Ever" and "Jerome Gambit: How He Did It") but others find it exhausting and unrewarding. 

As we saw in the previous post, it is possible to take advantage of  factors that tilt things more in the Jerome Gambit player's favor. Two of these are time and knowledge.

For example, as we saw in a couple of earlier posts (see "Jerome Gambit: GM vs GM!?" and "Jerome Gambit: Oops, He Did It Again?!") Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura benefitted from limiting his opponent's thinking time - Nakamura is one of the top blitz players in the world - and benefitted from the fact that his Grandmaster opponent was not familiar with the Jerome Gambit to score two wins in a couple of 3-minute games.

On the other hand, when GM Nakamura later faced Grandmaster Peter Michalik (see "Jerome Gambit: GM vs GM, Upset" and "Jerome Gambit: Gm vs GM, Upset Again"), GM Michalik seemed to know enough about the Jerome Gambit that the result was a couple of losses for White.

(I am not sure where time and knowledge for Grandmasters fit into Chandler's "blunder table".)

Of course, one thing that the Jerome Gambit player can do is examine his own games. Which moves seemed to advance his cause, which moves seemed to set him back. While we are always competing against our opponent, we also are also playing a game against ourselves. Increasing our own knowledge decreases the defender's, relatively.

The next step is to play over more Jerome Gambit games, like the ones on this blog, simply to absorb the strategy and play. Familiarity is a form of knowledge, and the more the gambiteer knows abut the opening, the better his chances.

On top of that, it is sometimes useful to examine the notes to the games, and to analyze the play of the game. 

It is also possible to create (see "You, too, can add to Jerome Gambit theory!") your own solutions to some of the Jerome Gambit's problems. A good example of how this is done is the series of posts " JG: The New in Its Opening Theory, in Its Psychology  (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5)" by Yury Bukayev, as he examines a new idea for White after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Ke6.