Sunday, January 8, 2023

Jerome Gambit: Uh, Yeah, Okay

My guess is that if you ever found yourself down a Queen and 5 pawns in the endgame, you might be willing to resign.

Even if you had been playing against the Jerome Gambit 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+.

In the case of the following game - the players shall remain nameless - Black was facing the Semi-Italian (or Anti-Fried Liver) Jerome Gambit 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 h6 4.Bxf7+.

Soon, things became dire for the defender. 


Time to resign?

Well, no.

Maybe the two competitors were friends and were having a laugh. Or maybe Black simply wanted to see if White could avoid a draw by stalemate.



Checkmate
Uh, Yeah, Okay, stalemate avoided.

Has this happened before? Almost.

Try this one.

Here the defender against the Jerome Gambit winds up with an extra Queen and 4 pawns, with the game ending up like this


Checkmate

And, once more, as a warning to White that "If you strike at the King (with the Jerome Gambit), you must kill him" here is another scary predicament from The Database


Ending up
Checkmate

(I know that some chess sets have an extra Queen for each side, to be ready if a pawn promotes. I have seen players who need another Queen turn a Rook over to represent a Queen and play with it that way. But what if you run out of Rooks, too?)

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