In A Lost and Lonely Place

For all of the refutations published, here and elsewhere, the Jerome Gambit can still lead a defender into a lost and lonely place, where his King can find danger, and sometimes an ignominious and untimely death.

perrypawnpusher - ibnoe
FICS, 2012

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ 

4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ g6 7.Qxe5 Nf6 

This move, which surrenders another piece (7...d6, the Blackburne Defense, is preferrable, and 7...Qe7, the Whistler Defense, is best) is as old as a game from a match between Mexican Champion Andres Clemente Vazquez and American William Harrington, Mexico 1876.

Either Black is unfamiliar with the Jerome Gambit (Quick! Block the Queen's check with a pawn! Yikes! Now my Rook is attacked by the Queen! Block the attack with my Knight!) or he believes that he can calm the opening by returning material, hoping to hold on in a pawn-down position.

8.Qxc5 Nxe4

In the notes to my game perrypawnpusher - brain50, JG3 thematic, Chessworld.net, 2008 I suggested 8...Nxe4. The earliest example of that move in The Database is Toromic - Achele, FICS, 2001 (0-1, 32).

9.Qd5+ Kf6 

My game perrypawnpusher  - LibertasProVita, blitz, FICS, 2009 continued 9...Kg7. In my notes (see "Sometimes a platypus has to do what a platypus has to do...") I suggested "After 10.Qxe4 Re8 11.Qe3 d5 12.0-0 Rxe3 13.dxe3 Bf5 White has Rook, a Knight and a pawn for his Queen. I think simply being a pawn up, with the text [10.0-0], is better." The same goes for 9...Kf6 10.Qxe4 in the current game.

10.0-0

Prudent, getting the King off of the dangerous file (10.Qxe4? Re8), but after the game Fritz 8 suggested the straight forward 10.d3, which simply wins the Knight, as it cannot move or Bg5+ would win Black's Queen.

10...Re8 11.d3 c6 

Black would like to chase away the annoying Queen before retreating his endangered Knight (11...Nd6 won't do because of 12.Bg5+). His best chance, found by Rybka after the game, shows how dangerous the position actually is: 11...Re5 12.Qb3! Nd6 13.Qc3 (pinning the Rook) Ke6 14.Bf4 Rf5 15.Re1+ Kf7 16.Bh6! Rf6 17.Bg5. During the game I was looking at 11...Re5 12.Qd4, immediately pinning the Rook, but 12...c5, while still good for White, would have led to messy positions.

12.Qd4+ Kf5 

Black does not "believe" in the attack, and wants at least a pawn back for the piece. Instead, he allows the Rook to be pinned after all.

13.dxe4+ Rxe4

14.Qd3 d5 15.f3 Ke5 16.fxe4 Black resigned

Alas, it was not meant to be...

The March 1891 issue of The International Chess Magazine carried news of a 6-game match in Havana, Cuba between Joseph Henry Blackburne and Andres Clemente Vazquez, from March 5 to March 11.


Vazquez, current Mexican Consul General in Cuba, was an early advocate of the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+). The past and future Mexican Chess Champion's handicap game in 1876 against Giraudy was introduced in the November 1876 issue of the American Chess Journal with some fanfare

Odds givers will also find the Jerome Gambit a summary method for disposing of the neophyte. And by the way, we observe that this new opening has found its way to Mexico – An American idea in the halls of the Montezumas. Signor Andres Clemente Vazquez, the Mexican Champion and editor of La Estrategia Mexicane, has been trying the "Double" [Jerome's Double Gambit] on an amateur at the odds of Queen's Rook, and that, too, with brilliant success, as will be seen by the following game, which we copy from La Estrategia.

In 1876 Vazquez was 3-0 with the Jerome Gambit in his second match against William Harrington, games he included in his book of that year, Algunas Partidas de Ajedrez.


Of note is that in his third edition of Analisis del juego de ajedres (1889) Vazquez included (along with the Giraudy game and a Harrington game) analysis of Blackburne's 1885 crushing defeat of the Jerome Gambit played by an amateur (for the game, see "Nobody expects the Jerome Gambit!", "Flaws (Part I)" and "Flaws (Part II)").

After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ g6 7.Qxe5 d6 8.Qxh8 Qh4 9.0-0 Nf6 in the Blackburne game, Vazquez suggested that instead of 10.c3 White should have played 10.Qd8, and after 10...Bb6 11.e5 dxe5 12.Qd3 White would have had the better game. (This is the earliest incidence of this analysis that I have seen; Munoz and Munoz, in reporting the Anonymous - Blackburne game in the August 1885 Brooklyn Chess Chronicle, had simply suggested 10.Qd8)

So, in the 4th game of the Blackburne - Vazquez match, with The Black Death leading two games to one, Vazquez had the White pieces and played: 1.e4 e5

In the second game of the match Blackburne had dodged with 1...c6, a Caro-Kann.

2.Bc4 Nc6

Best authorites recommend here 2...Nf6 wrote Steinitz.

3.Nf3 Bc5

The Italian Game! And now... and now... the Jerome Gambit???

And now Vazquez moved 4.0-0 and played a delayed Evans Gambit after 4...Nf6 with 5.b4.... He was checkmated in 40 moves.

The position after the third move again arose in the 6th game, with Blackburne leading the match 4-1, and Vazquez transposed to the pacific Four Knights Game with 4.0-0 Nf6 5.Nc3, losing in 33 moves.

Alas, a Jerome Gambit game was not to be.


(It is interesting to note that Mr. Blackburne's Games at Chess, published in 1899, has the more straight-forward move order for the 4th match game: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5, etc. On the other hand, P. Anderson Graham, in his summary of "Mr. Blackburne's Successes" in the same book, refers to Vazquez as the champion of Brazil!)

Flaws (Part II)

Amateur - Blackburne
London, 1885
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ g6

"Not to be outdone in generosity," Blackburne added in his 1899 collection Mr. Blackburne's Games at Chess.

In the American edition of Cook's Synopsis [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, 1884, edited by J.W. Miller] ...Ke6 is given as the best defence, but Mr. Blackburne's ingenious counter sacrifice in the present skirmish would seem to show that the text is at least as good -- Brooklyn Chess Cronicle, August 15, 1885 [Here and below, the annotation has been changed from descriptive to algebraic notation.]

Not considered in Alonzo Wheeler Jerome's earliest analysis, 6...g6 was seen at least as early as in the 5th game of the second match between Mexican Champion Andres Clemente Vazquez and American William Harrington, Mexico 1876 (Vazquez won the match 12-3-1): 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ g6 7.Qxe5 Nf6 8.Qxc5 d6 9.Qe3 Re8 10.d3 Ng4 11.Qf3+ Kg7 12.0-0 Rf8 13.Qg3 Qf6 14.h3 Ne5 15.Nc3 c6 16.Bg5 Qe6 17.Qh4 Nf7 18.f4 h6 19.f5 hxg5 20.fxe6 gxh4 21.Rxf7+ Rxf7 22.exf7 Kxf7 23.Rf1+ Kg7 24.e5 d5 25.Ne2 b5 26.Nd4 Bd7 27.Rf6 Rc8 28.Rd6 Be8 29.Kf2 Kf7 30.Kf3 c5 31.Ne2 d4 32.Kg4 Rc6 33.Kxh4 Rxd6 34.exd6 Kf6 35.Ng3 Bc6 36.Ne4+ Bxe4 37.dxe4 a5 38.e5+ Ke6 39.Kg3 1-0

7.Qxe5 d6

Despite the accolades awarded to this game, Black has a stronger counter-attack here, starting with 7...Qe7! as Jerome discovered to his dismay in the games of his correspondence match with Lt. G. N. Whistler, secretary of the Lexington, Kentucky Chess Club, in 1876.

8.Qxh8 Qh4 9.0-0

"He should have attempted to free his piece by d4 before castling," was the opinion of the Brooklyn Chess Chronicle, with White then having an edge.

9....Nf6 10.c3

"The only hope he had was 10.Qd8, thus preventing the deadly move of ...Ng4" -- Brooklyn Chess Chronicle.

Masterly analysis by Geoff Chandler and Todor Dimitrov showed that in the resulting play, the game would be drawn.

10.... Ng4 11.h3 Bxf2+ 12.Kh1 Bf5 13.Qxa8 Qxh3+ 14.gxh3 Bxe4 mate