Jerome Gambit: Disambiguation

 

As a matter of disambiguation - my vocabulary word of the week - I wanted to clarify that my reference to the Jerome Gambit line 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Ke6 7.f4 Bf2+

(see most recently "Jerome Gambit: Anti-Bill Wall Gambit, Just Fine") as the Anti-Bill Wall Gambit could be taken a couple of ways.

The "Anti-Bill Wall Gambit" would suggest that there was a Bill Wall Gambit, and Black was countering it. There isn't; Black isn't.

The "Anti-Bill Wall Gambit" would suggest that someone was playing a gambit against Bill Wall. This is more to the point.

Way back in the post "The Anti-Bill Wall Gambit" from a dozen years ago, I wrote about the game Wall,B - Buster, Chess.com, 2010 (1-0, 11)

Since the only other game that I have in the updated New Year's Database with 7...Bf2+ is Wall - Equa, Chess.com, 2010, I'm tempted to title it the "anti-Bill Wall gambit"!

The whole notion of ...B(x)f2+ seems to be "backatcha": Black says I really don't know what you're planning on getting out of that Bishop sac at f7, but whatever it is, here's the same thing back at you!

Of course, the irony is that from an objective point of view, what the Jerome Gambiteer gets out of that Bishop sac at f7 is "a lost game" so he is usually delighted for Black to offer to claim that outcome back for himself.

(Yes, indeed, The Database was called the New Year's Database back then, and had a whopping 17,000 games - versus the 75,900 games in today's The Database.) 

I apologize for the lack of clarity - Rick