Risk & Bluff in Chess

 

I have been reading GM Vladimir Tukmakov's Risk & Bluff in Chess The Art of Taking Calculated Risks. Like GM David Smerdon's The Complete Chess Swindler: How to Save Points from Lost Positions and IM Cyrus Lakdawala's Winning Ugly in Chess Playing Badly is No Excuse for Losing it is not an easy book but it has some interesting insights that can be applied to games with the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+).

In the Conclusion of Chapter 2 - Bluff in the Opening, he writes

What is meant by opening bluff in today's chess? Most often, it is when, in preparing for a concrete game with a concrete opponent, the player decides on an extremely risky continuation, in full awareness of the possible consequences... One is reminded of Anna Akhmatova's lines: 'If only you knew what trash gives rise / To verse, without a tinge of shame.'*

...[O]pportunities for computer preparation are now available not just to the world's top players, but to any amateur who is not afraid of technological progress. As a result, it is much more difficult now to surprise an opponent. On the other hand, if you do manage to catch someone out, the effect of the surprise is all the greater. After all, the opponent has the same information sources and databases available to you,** so he can see the same moves and the same computer assessments of the resulting positions. Consequently, the first reaction to a surprise in the opening is usually the standard one: 'I have probably looked at this, but have forgotten it'. However, once it proves impossible to drag anything up from the memory, the panic starts. No doubt the opponent has penetrated the secrets of the position omore deeply than you, and he is armed to the teeth against every possible continuation and remembers every variation perfectly. Meanwhile, you are forced, like a blind man, to grope around for the correct continuation, which the opponent already knows...   

*I Have No Use For Odic Legions

I have no use for odic legions,
Or for the charm of elegiac play
For me, all verse should be off kilter
Not the usual way.

If only you knew what trash gives rise
To verse, without a tinge of shame,
Like bright dandelions by a fence,
Like burdock and like cocklebur.

An angry shout, the bracing smell of tar,
Mysterious mildew on the wall…
And out comes a poem, light-hearted, tender,

To your delight and mine. 

** Of course, you do have access to this blog, and The Database, and likely your opponent does not.