Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Jerome Gambit: You Have Been Warned



I recently took a quick trip to the Simplify Chess website, where it was enlightening to read what it has on the Jerome Gambit:

Jerome gambit is extremely rare and occurs in less than 1 in 10,000 games. From the data, you can expect that White will only have a 39.13% chance of winning, while Black should have a very high 60.87% chance of winning. Since most players have probably never seen this opening and because White has such a low expected chance of winning, it may be well worth it to keep this variation in your back pocket. If you are Black you should have a significant edge and will probably catch your opponent off guard.

Of course, one must remember the argument that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics...

Therefore, I am required to report that The Database - an admittedly somewhat biased collection - has 36,480 Jerome Gambit games, with White winning 51% of the time.

Equally interesting is the lichess.org site, with 717,520 Jerome Gambit games, with White winning 48% of the games.

You pays your money and you takes your chances.

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