The Cincinnati connection is an important one in
the story of the development of the Jerome Gambit. In the 1870 and 1880s, the
chess column of the Commercial Gazette, conducted by J. W. Miller, was
considered to be one of the best in the United States . It occasionally ran
opening analysis presented by S. A. Charles, a member of the local chess club.
By January 1881, Charles had switched to sending his analyses to the Pittsburgh
Telegraph (later, the Chronicle-Telegraph), when the January 19, 1881 column
noted
The following
careful and complete analysis of the Jerome Gambit,
one of the newest attacks in chess,
and to be found in but few books, was compiled and condensed for THE TELEGRAPH
by Mr. S. A. Charles,
President of the Cincinnati Chess
Club, and victor in its recent tourney.
Charles had met the American Chess Journal
challenge, but his analysis did not include all of the lines explored in the Journal.
The
February 2, 1881 Pittsburgh Telegraph column ran a game (a win)
by Jerome, noting that the gambit
…although unsound,
as shown by Mr. Charles' analysis in this
column, yet leads to some
interesting and critical positions.
On April 27, 1881 , the Telegraph chess
column presented more information from Mr. Charles, including the fact that he
had been in contact with the Gambit’s originator
To the Chess
Editor of the Telegraph
A few weeks ago I
sent you a compilation of such analysis as
I could find of the “Jerome Gambit,” not
claiming to present anything
new, but only to furnish in a
compact form some information which was
not probably accessible to most of
your readers.
Since its publication
I have received some letters from Mr. Jerome,
the inventor of the gambit,
claiming that his gambit was sound and that
the attack could be improved upon
in some of the variations given.
Mr. Jerome's claims as to the
corrections, at last, seem to be well founded,
and I give below, as an appendix to
my former article, a short tabular
statement covering the principal
changes and corrections suggested by him.
It is much to be
hoped that Mr. Jerome may himself give to the
public at an early date his own
analysis of this, the only opening of any
note of American Invention .
A few weeks later, on June 8, 1881 , the Telegraph,
having heard from Jerome, ran the following, responding to Charles’ comments.
It shows Jerome again trying to keep the value and uniqueness of his Gambit in
perspective, despite the excitement, in the American post-Morphy period, for
something exciting, new, and homegrown
A letter received
from Mr. A. W. Jerome calls attention to the fact
that he does not claim the Jerome
Gambit to be analytically sound, but only
that over the board it is sound
enough to afford a vast amount of amusement.
Mr. J. refers to the so-called
"Meadow Hay" opening as being an American
invention. Well, if that is so, the less said about it the better for American
invention. Well, if that is so, the less said about it the better for American
chess reputation.
In October 1881, the Jerome Gambit
broke onto the international scene again, in Brentano's Chess Monthly,
(edited by H.C. Allen & J.N. Babson), with a letter and analysis from S. A.
Charles
Some time since I
published in the Pittsburgh Telegraph a
compilation of such analyses of the
Jerome Gambit as I could find, with
some additions from published
games. Mr. Jerome justly criticized some
of the moves as not being the best for either party,
and we commenced
as series of correspondence games
more as a test of the opening than of
individual skill.
Unfortunately Mr.
Jerome's business engagements have prevented
him from playing out the full
number of games originally started; yet the
situation even in the unfinished
games seems to me at least to prove the
gambit unsound, and that while
White may win against weak, he cannot
do against strong play.
I should add,
perhaps, that Mr. Jerome does not consider the defenses
here given to 6.d4 to be the best
but he does not suggest any others.
The November 2, 1881 chess column in the Pittsburgh
Telegraph ran Charles’ corrected and slightly updated version of his
analysis from Brentano's Chess Monthly.
The year 1882 brought yet more
attention, from respectable sources, to the Jerome Gambit. William Cook, with
the assistance of E. Freeborough and C. E. Ranken, brought out the third
edition of his Modern Chess Openings-style Cook's Synopsis of the
Chess Openings A Tabulated Analysis. Cook noted about his work
...Inasmuch as the
book does not lay claim to originality, the acknowledgement of the sources from
which the variations have been collected is perhaps unnecessary;
but it should be mentioned that the last edition of the "Handbuch
des Schachspiels," Mr. Gossip's "Theory
of the Openings" and Mr.
Wayte's able reviews of these works, together with the excellent Chess column of
the Field and other papers, the New Chess Monthly and the well-known
Chess Player's Chronicle have been indispensable to the production of this
book.
The 3rd
edition included analysis of the Jerome Gambit for the first time, and noted
that the gambit, “although unsound, affords some highly instructive analysis.”
Two year later, Cook’s Synopsis
- already out of print and still in great demand - was reprinted in its
entirety by J. W. Miller, with an additional section, American Supplement to
the "Synopsis," containing American Inventions In the Chess Openings
Together With Fresh Analysis in the Openings Since 1882; also a list of Chess
Clubs in the United States and Canada.
This 1884 American Supplement
contained two doses of Jerome: Cook’s analysis in the Synopsis portion,
and S. A. Charles’ analysis, in the Supplement portion. Miller added the
blusterous caution
The "Jerome
Gambit," 4.Bxf7+, involves an unsound
sacrifice; but it is not an attack
to be trifled with. The defense
requires study, and is somewhat
difficult.
By the way, we can get a measure of
the still-light-hearted sense of the Gambit at that time, from a note in the Pittsburgh
Chronicle-Telegraph chess column for the February 27, 1884
In Cincinnati
Library… We also had the pleasure
of contesting several games with
Mr. Jerome, of Paxton , Ill.
so-called Jerome Gambit, in which
white sacrifices the Bishop by
taking KBP on the fourth move of
the Giuoco Piano game. Neither
the gambit nor its author proved
strong in the contest.
The chess column (Maurian and Seguin October 19, 1884 , reviewed the American Supplement,
and hinted that the Jerome Gambit, among others, might have found its way onto
the pages at least in part because of its American heritage
With regard to the
"American Inventions," whether certain of
these so-called be worthy of the
honor of insertion or not, it is evident
that the editor has done good and
useful work, if only in collecting and
recording such in enduring form as
monuments along the pathway of
our national chess progress.
The review continued the following
week, and had several interesting comments pertaining to the Jerome Gambit
coverage
Of course, any
extended and minute examination of the various
openings or defenses included among
these "American Inventions," is
impossible in the limited space of
a chess column, but there are some
salient points in this connection
that have specially attracted our notice...
The
"brilliant but unsound" (why, may we ask, is this antithesis
so common that one would almost
infer it to be necessary?) Jerome
Gambit, invented by Mr. Jerome, of
Paxton, Ill.
constitutes the next of the Americana
by Mr. S. A. Charles we can only
venture to say that it seems to combine
much careful original work with variations
compiled from such
investigations as have been
published upon this hazardous attack. The
principal basis for most of these
has been, we believe, Sorenson's article
in the May, 1877, number of the Nordisk
Skaktidende, and which as
translated in Gossip's Theory,
pp.37-39, furnishes the only two variations
upon the opening given in the Synopsis
proper (ccf. p.49, cols 11 and 12).
We note, however, that Mr. Charles
differs from this authority in some
important particulars…
Of course, White
should lose eventually, for the gambit is an
admittedly and rather conspicuously
unsound one…
[to be continued]
