Jerome Gambit: Earlier Days...

Yesterday's post mentioned early Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) explorer Pete Banks - blackburne in online games, whose name has been attached to the Banks Variation (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Kf8 6.Qh5) - and got me thinking about earlier days...

Before starting this blog, I wrote a substantial article on the Jerome Gambit and submitted it to Stefan Bücker's chess magazine Kaissiber. Bücker tried repeatedly to edit the piece to make it publishable - see "Delusions of Grandeur" - but it was a lot like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear... He could not make it work.

Kaissiber ended its publication before Bücker was able to do so, reminding me a bit of Ben Bova's 1966 short story, "Stars Won't You Hide Me" (see review).

In any event, I finally posted the article on this blog. See "The Jerome Gambit Article (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8)".

Not wanting to dip into the article too much before it saw publication, I encouraged Pete to contact International Master Gary Lane as the Jerome Gambit point man, which he easily was able to do, hence the appearance of blackburne - karmmark, Jerome Gambit thematic tournament, ChessWorld.net, 2007 in two of IM Lane's ChessCafe.com "Opening Lanes" articles titled "The Good Old Days" and "Chess Made Easy" as well as his book book The Greatest Chess Tricks and Traps (2008).

So there are any number of people these days who connect Pete Banks through his games with the Jerome Gambit, while being unaware of Alonzo Wheeler Jerome himself. This kind of thing has happened before, as I noted in "The Jerome-Kennedy Gambits!?" 

As I noted in my afterward to the posts on the Literary Digest game [see Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5], Mr. Jerome has had a hard time holding on to "his" opening: sources such as Cook's Synopsis of the Chess Openings (1882), The American Supplement (1884), and Freeborough and Rankin's Chess Openings Ancient and Modern, (1889) were happy to keep the name "Jerome Gambit", but identified the chief analyst of the opening as "Mr. S. A. Charles of Cincinnati, Ohio." Sic transit gloria mundi.

I am hoping that Pete reads the previous post and this one, and contacts me. I bet he has some very interesting Jerome Gambits to share.