Jerome Gambit: Silicon Opinions

Years ago I wrote reviews for the online chess site Chessville.com. That was something that I put a lot of work into and really enjoyed. 

Even though it has ceased publication, you can still visit Chessville, via The Wayback Machine - there is a lot of very interesting, helpful and entertaining content there.

(Plus a lot of my reviews and short stories.)

One book that I reviewed was The Final Theory of Chess (Philidor Press, 2008) by Gary M. Danelishen, which the author, himself, described

The Final Theory of Chess is an attempt to lay a solid foundation upon which further analysis may be built in order to reach the first goal of a partial solution to the game of chess.  Between mid 2004 and 2008, daily computer analysis was conducted and The Final Theory of Chess slowly was written.  During this time, a network of six computers running the Fritz family of computer chess programs continuously calculated around the clock.  Each previous round of analysis laid a foundation upon which future analysis was conducted…

Of course, nowadays no top Grandmaster would go into battle without at least a glance - more likely, a deep dive - into what computer analysis has to say about the opening that is going to be played. Computer chess programs can be used to provide guidance and make suggestions.

All of which brings me to two recent YouTube.com videos which present computer vs computer games which explore a couple of different lines in the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+).

renz4ever has a series of video titles such as "Stockfish Goes for Bongcloud Against Leela!",  "Stockfish VS Komodo - Fried Fox Pork Chop Opening", "Komodo VS Stockfish - Grob Gambit",

"Stockfish VS Komodo - Danish Gambit", and "Stockfish VS Komodo - Triple Muzio Gambit" - but what really interested me was a pair of Jerome Gambit games played by two engines with extremely high ratings

"Stockfish Shows Leela His Jerome", a computer rated 3880 vs one rated 3860 

and  

"Stockfish vs Komodo - Jerome Gambit" a computer rated 3880 vs one rated 3475

In the first game, Black adopted the "silicon defense" and prevailed in 69 moves. I don't suppose that is the "final theory" on the Jerome Gambit - after all, if it took a computer rated 3860 almost 70 moves to defeat the Jerome...

In the second game, we saw that giving "Jerome Gambit odds" could be risky, even when playing an opponent rated about 400 points lower - at least in the silicon world. Computers can be harsh: I once figured that about 200 points would be enough for a human playing the Jerome Gambit to preavail against a human opponent. 

(By the way, I would love to look up the lines of play in renz4ever's videos and see if they appear in Danelishen's book, but the latter only looks at 1.d4.)