Monday, February 14, 2022

Jerome Gambit: Excitable



I know that sometimes I can be a bit excitable about the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+).

For example, when this blog was only 4 months old (almost 14 years, or about 3,575 posts ago) I heard about the existance of a book All or Nothing! The Jerome Gambit, by Chaim Schmendrik and was ecstatic.

Of course, as I related in "rec.games.chess.misc & email" it was a joke. There was no such book.

Later, I admitted that "The Jerome Gambit is Going to Drive Me... (Parts 1 & 2)" after I tried to chase down a story about Alekhine losing to the Jerome Gambit... It was, again, "Much Ado About... Nothing".

Even later, I chronicled some of this searching in "Jerome Gambit: Worse vs Best (Parts 1, 2 & 3)". (Emanuel Lasker faced the Jerome? Wilhelm Steinitz lost to the Jerome?) After all, the good Dr. Michael Goeller had informed me that GM Larry Christiansen had played the Jerome - see "A GM plays the Jerome Gambit ??"


I mention all of this as prelude, for chessfriend Dan Middlemiss - a devoted Stafford Gambit aficionado and relentless provider of Jerome Gambit games that I had not yet seen - teased me with the following tidbit
BTW, during the Gibraltar Battle of the Sexes tournament, somebody in the chat (a highly suspect source!) mentioned that GM Pia Cramling has been know to dabble in the Jerome Gambit. I wonder whether your readers might be able to confirm this....

Wow.

Oh, no, here I go again... 

(I sent a message to WFM Anna Cramling, GM Cramling's daughter as well as a Twitch live streamer and YouTuber, asking if either one of them had experimented with the Jerome Gambit.)

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