Recently I received the following Jerome Gambit game. At first, I did not know what to make of it. Anonymous - Anonymous 5 3 blitz, lichess.org, 2020 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+
That was kind of strange... Except, a couple of days later, the same line played out in another game, a 3 0 blitz, although the defender struggled on for a dozen more moves before resigning. How to explain Black's 8th move? A weak chess player? A hurried-by-the clock chess player? A scared-by-the-Jerome-Gambit chess player? An overconfident-and-therefore-inattentive chess player? I finally decided that I had been onto something when I wrote "Half a defense is worse than none at all..." a decade ago. My guess is that 7 out of 10 players who have ever heard of the Jerome Gambit had been exposed to Amateur - Blackburne, London, 1884: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ g6 7.Qxe5 d6 8.Qxh8 Qh4 9.O-O Nf6 10.c3 Ng4 11.h3 Bxf2+ 12.Kh1 Bf5 13.Qxa8 Qxh3+ 14.gxh3 Bxe4#
What if the defenders in both recent games remembered only a part of Blackburne's defense, or remembered it incompletely?
"Hmm... silly Jerome Gambit... accept the sacrificed Bishop... accept the sacrificed Knight... give back a Rook... trap the enemy Queen with my Kight - No, wait, I was supposed to play 8...Qh4 first!!"
I found an earlier game with even more pain. KONB - elmflare standard, FICS, 2011 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+Nxe5 6.Qh5+ g6 7.Qxe5 d6 8.Qxh8 Qh4 9.O-O Nf6
This time the Queen is trapped, but take note of White's next move. Meanwhile, Black repeats Blackburne's killer attack on the King, including sacrificing another Rook, and his Queen. 10.Nc3 Ng4 11.h3 Bxf2+ 12.Kh1 Bf5 13.Qxa8 Qxh3+ 14.gxh3 Bxe4+ 15.Nxe4 Black resigned
White's Knight on c3 - instead of a pawn, as the Amateur played against Blackburne - ruined Black's fireworks display. So, is 10.Nc3 White's way out of his Blackburne nightmare? Actually, a game played at the end of May of this year said: No! flash_ahaaa - thefinalzugzwang 2 1 blitz, lichess.org, 2020 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ g6 7.Qxe5 d6 8.Qxh8 Qh4 9.O-O Nf6 10.Nc3
10...Bh3 11.Qxa8 Best might have been 11.Qxf6+ Kxf6 12.gxh3 Qxh3, with a Rook, a Knight and a pawn for his Queen, although Black would still be better. 11...Qg4 12.g3 Qf3 White resigned
Surprisingly enough, Grandmaster Larry Evans had discussed this line in his Chess Catechism (1970). He gave 10...Bh3 a "!". In discussion on this blog, "GM Larry Evans and the Jerome Gambit", Bill Wall pointed out 10...Ng4, that elmflare played, above. (Is 10.Qd8!? the real solution to White's trapped Queen? That's a long story, and one that will have to wait for another day.)
Readers of this blog have seen a lot of creative and historical coverage of the Jerome Gambit, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+, and related openings, such as the Blackburne Shilling Jerome Gambit, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nd4 4.Bxf7+. In addition, there have been explorations of "proto-Jerome Gambits" - earlier lines of play that might have inspired Alonzo Wheeler Jerome to create his opening. One such Jerome Gambit "relative" was showcased in "Adolf Albin Plays the Jerome Gambit (Part 1 & 2)", highlighting the gameAlbin,A - Schlechter,C, Trebitsch Memorial Tournament Vienna, 1914. The game began1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Qe2 Bc5 5.Bxf7+, which easily could have been a transposition from 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Qe2 Nf6, a "modern" (no 5.Nxe5+) Jerome Gambit. White's 4th move was anticipated at least by James Mason, who, in the August
1895 British Chess Magazine, gave a game “played recently by
correspondence between Brandfort and Bloemfontein, South Africa” which went
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Qe2 d6. Mason suggested the move 4…Nf6, because
“there would be plenty of time to play the Pawn - perhaps two squares instead of one. For, as the
Cape Times remarks, if White adopts the ‘Jerome Gambit’ 5.Bxf7+ Black
replies 5…Kxf7 6.Qc4+ d5 7.Qxc5 Nxe4 with advantage.” The Salvio Gambit (see"The Salvio Gambit??" and "The Salvio Gambit?? [more]"), from analysis from the early 1600s, is related: 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Bc5 and now 3.Qe2 Nf6/Nc6 4.Bxf7+. It is probably timely to reiterate that I refer to 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Bc5 3.Bxf7+ as the "Abrahams Jerome Gambit" (see "Abrahams Jerome Gambit" Part 1 & Part 2), not because Alonzo Wheeler Jerome ever played the line, nor Abrahams, as far as I know, but because it was referred to as the Jerome Gambit inThe Chess Mind (1951) and The Pan Book of Chess(1965), by Gerald Abrahams. It is hard to overlook another possible precursor: the game Hamppe - Meitner, Vienna Club, 1872, which begins a little bit like a reversed Jerome Gambit, 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Bc5 3.Na4 Bxf2+ and is covered in "Godfather of the Jerome Gambit? (Part I, Part II, Part III, and Endnote)". Another opening with themes akin to the Jerome - with an initial Knight sacrifice at f7 - which may have caught Alonzo Jerome's eye - is the Sarratt Attack, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 Bc5 5.Ng5 usually followed by 5...Nh6 6.Nxf7 Nxf7 7.Bxf7+ Kxf7. Similar (although I occasionally mix them up) is the Vitzthum Attack, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 Bc5 5.Ng5 Nh6 followed by 6.Qh5.A good review can be found in the post "Capt. Evans Faces the Sarratt Attack". Then, of course, there was the rumor that culminated in the post, here,"A GM plays the Jerome Gambit??", followed by "Here, have a Bishop..." and "Here, have another...". That was topped by the rumor that Alexander Alekhine had defended against the Jerome Gambit - see "The Jerome Gambit is Going to Drive Me... (Part 1 & Part 2)"; and then, sadly "Much Ado About... Nothing". Oh, oh, oh... Can we get back to the time when a modern, 2700+-rated Grandmaster didn't play the Jerome Gambit??
In the previous post (see "Jerome Gambit: Move That Knight!") I shared a couple of outrageous ways (other than sacrificing it at e5) for White to move his King's Knight out of the way in the Jerome Gambit so that his Queen can enter the fray. Of course, one "solution" is not to put the Knight there in the first place. Consider the Abrahams Jerome Gambit, 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Bc5 3.Bxf7+!? I consulted The Database, and learned that it has one 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Bc5 3.Bxf7+ game by Bill Wall - always a good openings experimenter to check out - played on the internet in 2001. (Even that far back, he played a couple of games with 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+.) It turns out that at the same time Bill was extending his experiments a bit, as the following game shows. Wall, Bill - Quianna Internet, 2001 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Bc5 3.b4
This move is at least as old as the MacDonnell - La Bourdonnais, London match,1834. 3...Bxb4 4.c3 Bc5 5.d4 exd4 6.Bxf7+
Here we have what might be called the "Evans-ish Abrahams Jerome Gambit", as it is not quite an Evans Gambit without Nf3/Nc6. The game follows MacDonnell - Boden, London, 1869, for 5 moves, but the first game example that I have of the move 6 Bishop sacrifice is from 2000.(Light analysis of the sacrifice is at least as old as Jaenisch's Analyse Nouvelle des ouverturesin the 1840s.) 6...Kxf7 7.Qh5+ g6 8.Qxc5
NM Eric Schiller, in notes to a game (Denker - Shayne, Rochester, New York, 1945) at Chessgames.com, said this position "looks very good for White". (It's probably about even - but for White to reach equality in 8 moves in any kind of Jerome Gambit has got to be very good, right?) 8...dxc3 The kind of pawn-grabbing that is usually punished. Instead, Stockfish 9 suggests 8...Qe7 - as seen in Delanoy - Kamenecki, Cannes, France, 2000 (1-0, 38) - with an even game. However, Michael Goeller, a Bishop's Opening expert, gives that move a "?!" and prefers 8...Nf6 - no games in The Database - which he gives a "!", with an even game. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with 8...Nc6 or 8...d6, either. 9.Nxc3 d6
10.Qd5+ Psychological warfare. Bill has used a similar Queen check in the Jerome Gambit proper to question Black: Do you want to play ...Be6 and give up the b-pawn? 10...Kf8 Black replies Not quite, and keeps his King off of the a1-h8 diagonal, where one of his Rooks lives, and where White's remaining Bishop might take up residence. Yet, 10...Kg7 might have been a better move. 11.Nf3 c6
Kicking the Queen, instead of focusing on development. White has ample compensation for his sacrificed pawn (development, Black's unsafe King), and his opponent's next move, a nervous oversight, ends the game. 12.Qd4 c5 13.Qxh8 Black resigned
At different times on this blog, I have looked for possible fore-runners to the Jerome Gambit (inspirations to Alonzo Wheeler Jerome), including the Sarratt or Vitzthum Attack. (See "A Bridge To... Somewhere?", "Another Distant Relative?", "The Sarratt Attack", "Another look at the Sarratt Attack" and "Another Example of the Vitzthum Attack"). Recently I was reading Dr. Tim Harding's Eminent Victorian Chess Players Ten Biographies (2012), and in its Appendix II "Games by Captain Evans" I found the following game. While its date is unknown, the fact that it was published in 1843 makes it one of the earliest examples of the opening that I have seen. It also features a creative fortress defense (R + N vs Q) in the endgame. Wilson, Harry - Evans, William Davies Unknown place and date Notes by Harding and CPC. From CPC [Chess Player's Chronicle], IV (1843) pages 293-295: "This and the following game are from a choice collection of unpublished MS. games in the possession of Mr. Harry Wilson, which that distinguished Amateur, with his accustomed liberality, has kindly placed at the disposal of the Editor." The games could have been played in Wales (if before 1840) or in London, or at Wilson's home at Carisbrooke on the Isle of Wight. 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 Bc5 5.Ng5 Nh6 6.Nxf7 Nxf7 7.Bxf7+ Kxf7 8.Qh5+ g6 9.Qxc5
