A Little off Topic

I am working my way through Tim Harding's Four Gambits to Defeat the French, a book that I've been interested in for a long time, but only recently acquired.

Dr. Harding is one of my favorite authors, and his first book, Bishop's Opening, is still a classic. In fact, his current "Kibitzer" column at Chesscafe.com, "A New Look at an Old Opening" – catch it while you can, as only current columns are free of charge, although older ones can be purchased as low-cost e-books – takes a look at that book, and updates the opening with some interesting games.

In the notes to the game Tim Harding – R. J. Stockwell, Oxfordshire - Surrey county match, 1971, Harding touches upon the line 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nxe4 4 Bxf7+?! which should catch the eye of every Jerome Gambiteer, and be reminiscent of 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Nc3 Nxe4 5.Bxf7+, referred by Tim Sawyer as the Open Italian Four Knights Jerome Gambit.

Harding continues the line: 4...Kxf7 5 Nxe4 d5 6 Qf3+ Kg8 and then discusses the possibilites of 7.d4!?. Great fun. Check it out.

By the way, Harding is well into writing his biography of Joseph Henry Blackburne, which will include 1,000 of the "Black Death's" games. The moment he even hints that it is available, I will be ordering my copy!

Further Explorations (Part 2)

Tim Sawyer's "Open Italian Four Knights Jerome Gambit" game (See "Further Explorations Part 1")  on his "Playing Chess Openings" website comes with an introduction


In a recent Internet Chess Club game, my opponent "jeromed" chose to play a form of Jerome Gambit. Here White gets the piece back. In that way it is more Queen's Gambit than King's Gambit, but it has an aggressive feel. Bill Wall lists it as a "Noa Gambit, Four Knights", but it is so Jerome-ish that I am borrowing that name, especially in view of my opponent's ICC handle. 


The game:


jeromed - Sawyer, 
blitz 3 0, Internet Chess Club, 2012


1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Nc3 

Even after Black side-stepped the Giuoco Piano into the Two Knights Defense, White is looking to play an Italian Four Knights Jerome Gambit with 4...Bc5 5.Bxf7+.


It is interesting to give Tim Harding's additional perspective on White's move, from his "Kibitzer" column "Open Games Revisited: The Two Knights" at ChessCafe.com, as he sees more than the "fork trick"


4.Nc3 can also be met by 4...Nxe4; this is possible because if 5.Nxe4 d5 forks knight and bishop and so regains the sacrificed material. However, if White is not a beginner then he has probably played 4.Nc3 with the intention of offering the tricky Boden-Kieseritsky Gambit, 4...Nxe4 5.0-0 Nxc3 6. dxc3, when natural moves don’t work for Black... The gambit should be unsound, but the second player must be very careful in the early stages.


4...Nxe4 5.Bxf7+ 


Tim notes
The Jerome Gambit idea. Usually White plays 5.Nxe4 d5 6.Bd3 dxe4 (6...Nb4!= Kaufman) 7.Bxe4 Bd6= (7...Ne7!? is an interesting alternative. 


5...Kxf7 6.Nxe4 d5 7.Ng3!? Bd6 8.d3 Rf8 

9.Bg5


Tim, sympathetically: 
White can quickly castle kingside: 9.0-0 Kg8 10.h3 h6 11.c4 Fighting for e4 for the Ng3. 11...Be6 12.cxd5 Bxd5 13.Ne4 Nd4 14.Nxd4 exd4 15.Qg4 with a playable game for White, although it seems Black a little stands better.


9...Qe8 10.Qd2 Kg8 11.0-0-0 Bg4 12.h3 Bxf3 13.gxf3 Rxf3 14.Rhg1 Qf7 15.Nh1 Kh8 16.c3 d4 17.c4 Rf8 

18.Bh4? e4 19.dxe4? Bf4 White resigned

(Okay, so I grabbed the "Cheszilla" graphic from a the Cafe Press website, after all. Still worth checking them out.)

Like a Needle in a Haystack (Part 2)

Of course, primary historical sources of Jerome Gambit games and analysis are the chess magazine and magazine and newpaper chess columns of the period. Finding a Jerome "needle" in that many "haystacks" without some kind of a clue can be an exhausting task.

An excellent example of such a "clue" is the Jerome Gambit entry from the Oxford Companion to Chess (1984) by David Hooper and Kenneth Whylde

Jerome Gambit in the Italian Opening; an unsound gambit that can lead to much amusement in light hearted play. It first appeared in the American Chess Journal, 1876, recommended by the American player Alonzo Wheeler Jerome (1834-1902) of Paxton, Illinois.

While games and references to Alonzo Wheeler Jerome and his gambit can be found in the June, September, November and December 1876 issues of the American Chess Journal, it turns out that analysis appeared two years earlier, in the April 1874 issue of the Dubuque Chess Journal.

Confusing these two journals, by the way, is not difficult. As Tim Harding wrote in his "The Kibitzer" column at ChessCafe.com in 2007

...[T]he Dubuque Chess Journal was started by Professor Brownson in 1870 and he stopped it after number 73 in summer 1876.

He thought he had sold the rights to W. S. Hallock, who produced the first two volumes of The American Chess Journal, beginning with June 1876 and numbered consecutively from Brownson, i.e. he started with number 74... It was published in Hannibal, Missouri, from June 1876 to December 1877...

Hallock apparently did not pay Brownson (or at least that is what Brownson said) so Brownson restarted his magazine as Brownson’s Chess Journal in February 1877, also resuming with number 74. At different times, Brownson varied his titles...

Having re-established his rights, Brownson stopped in 1878, but resumed again many years later... The last three Hallock issues (his incomplete volume 2) were bi-monthly, with the November-December issue very short. Here he announced he had sold his rights to Dr. C. C. Moore in New York...

Because of moving everything to another city, there was a delay and the new series of The American Chess Journal began March 1878... It ended July 1879.

Moore then sold to Barbe, in Chicago, who did his best to continue The American Chess Journal as a quarterly...

Barbe published Vol. 1-Vol. 2, no 3 (Oct 1879-Dec 1881), but actually number 3 was April 1881. To increase the confusion, the issue of October 1880 was headed volume 1 no 5 on the title page, but as this was a quarterly, it should have been vol. 2 no. 1, as Barbe must have realised subsequently. So then comes January 1881, headed Vol. 2 no 2, but the page numbers are continuous from October 1880. Then April 1881 was the last issue...

After the end of Barbe’s series, there were no Journals until Brownson resumed in 1886.

Got it, right?

Jerome Gambit vs Two Knights Defense (Part 4)

Still another way for the Jerome Gambiteer to face the Two Knights Defense (see "Jerome Gambit vs Two Knights Defense Part 1", "Part 2" and "Part 3"), besides playing the main lines, opting for 4.Qe2 or playing for a transition to the Italian Four Knights Game with 4.Nc3 is 4.0-0.

So we have 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.0-0, which has more going for it than is generally realized.

International Master Tim Harding, writing in his "Kibitzer" column at ChessCafe, noted 

4 0-0 is not a move you will see played by experienced players; it is simply not direct enough.

International Master Jan Pinski, in Italian Game and Evans Gambit, was even more dismissive

4.0-0 is completely toothless, and Black can do as he pleases.

Perhaps the second player will be so lulled by the move that he will play 4...Bc5, when 5.Bxf7+ Kxf7 transforms the game into a "modern" Jerome Gambit variation (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.0-0 Nf6)? In this line, the updated New Year's Database has 548 games. White scores 39%.

What if, after 4.0-0, Black plays 4...Nxe4? Probably White can get an even game with 5.d3, but the move he should really look at is 5.Nc3!?, offering the Boden-Kieseritzky Gambit – a strategy that has worked well for me. The same idea should occur after 4.Nc3 (from yesterday's post) Nxe4 5.0-0.

The Boden-Kieseritzky Gambit is not well-known at the club level. In addition, it gives White a line to play against the Petroff Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Bc4 Nxe4 4.Nc3).

The one "downside" I would say that the B-KG has is that it is so much fun, some players might give up the Jerome Gambit and start playing it!

Here are a few B-KG resources to get started:

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kibitz145.pdf
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/lane38.pdf
http://www.mjae.com/boden-kieseritzky.html
http://jeanpaul.garnier.free.fr/htm/A2Ten.htm

Tim Harding, PhD

Readers are probably familiar with Senior International Master of Correspondence Chess Tim Harding, who in July, 2009, received his PhD in History. His doctoral thesis was on correspondence chess in Britain and Ireland during the period 1824-1914.

Harding has been a contributor to the ChessCafe for 15 years, writing his monthly column "The Kibitzer". He has written quite a number of good chess books, with a focus on chess openings (orthodox and unorthodox), chess improvement, and correspondence chess. Harding has also published academic articles on chess history.

Later this year McFarland & Company, Inc. will publish his Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland, 1824-1987.

The UltraCorr3 CD, compiled by Harding, is the resource for chessplayers who want the best (largest, cleanest) correspondence game database. The CD not only includes over one million games; it also includes PDF files of Chess Mail, an international correspondence chess magazine that Harding published for 10 years; of Winning at Correspondence Chess; and of  64 Great Chess Games.

What of Dr. Harding and the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+)? In a recent email to me he wrote "There are no games with this unsound gambit in my book," but he shocked me by including a file of Jerome Gambit correspondence chess games from his database, four of which I had never seen before, one by Alonzo Wheeler Jerome himself. (Looks like I need to upgrade from my MegaCorr CD – the precursor to UltraCorr!)

Over the next few weeks I'll share these "new" games, fitting them in with other historical information.

The Mysterious kingmaple

In yesterday's post (see "King of the Hill") I mentioned that the player kingmaple had 619 entries in the updated 18,000 game New Year's Database of Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+), Blackburne Shilling Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nd4 4.Bxf7+), and Semi-Italian Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 h6 4.0-0/4.Nc3/4.d3 Bc5 5.Bxf7+) games – and yet he had not been mentioned previously in any post on this blog.

A closer examination of kingmaple's games shows why: he plays a variation of the Scotch Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 Bc5 5.c3 dxc3 6.Bxf7+ Kxf7 7.Qd5+) which can arise, after a fashion, from a "modern" form of the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.d4 exd4 6.c3 dxc3 7.Qd5+).

(Of course, Black and White have alternative ways of playing in both the Scotch Gambit and the Jerome Gambit that would not lead to this position.)

In my researching, kingmaple's efforts got scooped up with the other Jerome Gambit and Jerome-ish games.

Readers who find this position interesting and who would like to follow in kingmaple's footsteps can start by checking out two "Kibitzer" columns on the Scotch Gambit (1, 2) by ICCF Senior IM Tim Harding in the Archives at ChessCafe.