I am re-reading Amatzia Avni's classic, Danger in Chess, How to Avoid Making Blunders (Dover, 2003; Cadogan Books 1994).
Just, because.
Avni starts the chapter "Common Failures in the Sensing of Danger: Opponent-Related Factors", under the subtitle "When the opponent plays badly in the opening"
Suppose you play against someone who makes some silly moves, right from the start. He sheds material, or plays not in accordance with development rules, or he makes apparently self-destructive moves... Most chess players, when faced with such an enemy, tend to relax and expect an early success. It is a human trait to count on consistency in behaviour; if our adversary played weakly until now, so we reason, he is likely to demonstrate the same low quality in the following phses of the game as well.
This line of thought is devoid of empirical justification. our opponent may posess poor openings knowledge, but still be a strong middlegame player. Or he may have deliberately made early provoations to lead us to think that our victory is assured.
Whatever our impression about our rivaal's level of play, we must stay on guard!
The Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) comes to mind, doesn't it?
Checking with The Database, I have played 786 games with the Jerome Gambit, scoring 82%.
This is dwarfed by Bill Wall's 1,352 games, scoring 94%.
The moral is clear, our opponents must stay on guard: after all, Stockfish 16.1 evaluates the Jerome Gambit (35 ply) as being about 2 2/3 pawns better, for Black.
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