Jerome Gambit: An Idea Is A Tool

 

As I have noted before

Gerald Abrahams wrote in his book, The Chess Mind, that the smallest unit in a chess game was not the move, but the idea.

Ideas in chess are like tools in a tool box, the more you have, the better your pattern recognition, the faster you can identify candidate moves and the better your chances for success.

Consider the following blitz game. Remember that blitz time controls often make it more difficult to find the "tool" that you need.

psatpute - rs_pecoraro

10 0 blitz, lichess.org, 2022.

14.f3 Qd4+ 15.Kh1 Nf2+ 16.Kg1 Nxe4+ 17.Kh1 Nf2+ 18.Kg1 Nh3+ 19.Kh1 Nf2+ 20.Kg1 Nh3+ 21.Kh1 Nf2+ draw

There you go.

You could say that White escaped from the "refuted" Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) that he started with.

You could say that Black escaped from the horrible onslaught that often accompanies the Jerome Gambit.

But - if your mental "tool set" contained the idea of a "smothered checkmate", you might have found 

16...Nh3+ (the double check is important) 17.Kh1 Qg1+! 18.Rxg1 Nf2# or

18...Nh3+ 19.Kh1 Qg1+! 20.Rxg1 Nf2# or

19...Qg1+! 21.Rxg1 Nf2#

21...Qg1+! 22.Rxg1 Nf2#

I give the above, somewhat repetitive, lines to help reinforce the idea of a "smothered checkmate", as well as the following diagram