Monday, June 26, 2023

A Jerome Gambit Book??

 


Certainly, I have toyed with the idea, almost from the beginning.

"Is there a book in all of this??" I wondered, before this blog was even 2 years old. (It is now 15.) 

The post "Jerome Gambit Book", 4 1/2 years after that, showed that I had not given up on the idea.

I even trialed first steps with "Jerome Gambit for Dummies 2.0 (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6)" about a year ago.

What happened to "Jerome Gambit for Dummies 1.0"? you might ask.

Well, those posts - Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5 actually appeared in early 2009, but they prompted a rather prompt response - see "Real - and Un-Real" -

Is this book available in Europe?

Certainly not way back then.

Or even now.

But a book, something like chessfriend Bill Wall's 500 King's Gambit Miniatures, perhaps? 

A quick look at The Database shows almost 85,000 games. That would take a lot of winnowing (cutting 99%) to come up with 500 Jerome Gambits. Gulp.

Even if I focused solely upon the move order 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ (leaving out Blackburne Shilling Jerome Gambits, Semi-Italian Jerome Gambits, and Italian Four Knights' Jerome Gambits, among others, and ignoring all of the Declineds) - I would still have over 29,000 games to sift and sort.

If I chose games of 25 moves or less from The Database, that would still be over 800 games.

Ah, but what if I limited myself to games in The Database where one player was rated 2500 or higher? Turns out, that would still leave me with about 400 games.

And there are over 100 Jerome Gambit games in The Database where both players are rated 2500 or higher.

Nonetheless, I do plan on working on a Jerome Gambit book. I even have a title picked out, All or Nothing! The Jerome Gambit, in honor of the legendary openings explorer, Chaim Schmendrik.




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