Just Look Ahead and Move!

Years ago, after playing over a number of Akiba Rubinstein's (1880 – 1961) games, I was inclined to think that he had reduced chess to a few easy steps: play 1.d4, win a pawn, exchange all the pieces, win the endgame. (Actually, it was a lot more complicated than that.)

With a chuckle, I was reminded of Rubinstein when playing over the following online blitz game by shugart. He offers a piece, Jerome Gambit style, but his opponent declines it. Like water rolling down hill, the game then progresses. It doesn't seem that there is a lot of need for tactical calculation - just look ahead and move!

Actually, it is a lot more complicated than that, as the notes show... A very eduational endgame! 

shugart - snob
3 0 blitz, FICS, 2017

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nd4

The Blackburne Shilling Gambit. 

4.Bxf7+ 

The Blackburne Shilling Jerome Gambit.

4...Ke7 

Black declines the gift of a piece. If you want me to take the Bishop, then I won't take the Bishop.

5.Bxg8 Rxg8 6.Nxd4 exd4 

Comfortable with an extra pawn - plus a safer King and a better pawn structure - White is comfortable letting the game unfold.

7.d3 h6 8.Qh5 d6 9.O-O Be6 10.f4 Bf7 

Black has the two Bishops. He is not in a hurry, either.

11.Qh4+ Kd7 12.Qh3+ Be6 13.f5 Bf7 14.Bf4 Kc8 15.Nd2 b6 16.Nb3 c5 

Black has secured his advanced d-pawn.

17.Qg3 Kc7 18.e5 Bxb3 19.exd6+ Bxd6 20.Bxd6+ Qxd6 21.Qxd6+ Kxd6 22.axb3 

In a 3 0 game, such exchanges happen quickly and help with the clock.

Will White's kingside pawn majority be enough?

22...Rgf8 23.g4 a5 24.Rae1 Rae8 25.Rxe8 Rxe8 26.Kf2 Rf8

It was time, instead, for Black's Rook to invade via 26...Re3, with his King to advance behind it, keeping the game balanced. White now shows how it's done.

 27.Re1 Rf7 28.Re6+ Kc7 29.Kf3 b5 30.Ra6 Re7 

The issue here is not Black's a-pawn. It is the fact that when Rooks come off the board White will have a straight-forward win.

31.Ra7+ Kd6 32.Rxe7 Kxe7 

Okay, how fast can you move your pieces? The game is barely half over.

33.h4 Kd6 34.Ke4 b4 

Now the inhuman Stockfish 8 declares a checkmate in 26, but the ticking clock will inject a few inaccuracies before White grasps the full point.

 35.g5 h5 36.Kf3 Ke5 37.f6 gxf6 38.gxf6 

The more accurate 38.g6!? was the way to win, with many hassles: 38...Ke6 39.Kf4 Ke7 40.Kf5 c4 41.bxc4 a4 42.c5 a3 43.bxa3 bxa3 44.g7 Kf7 45.c6 Kxf7 46.c7 a2 47.c8/Q a1/Q 48.Qd7+

38...Kxf6 

39.Kf4 Ke6 40.Kg5 

White should admit that he has only a draw, and mark the enemy King with 40.Ke4, keeping it out of mischief. He also should keep his King closer to home, as Black can now cause pawn mischief similar to the note above: 40...c4 41.bxc4 a4 42.c5 a3 43.c6 Ke6 and it is Black who will have a checkmate in 26!

40...Ke5 41.Kxh5 Kf4 

Black's King advances aggressively, but it needed, instead, to mark White's King with 41...Kf5 and let his pawns do the work, e.g. 42...c4.

The advantage agains shifts to White.

42.Kg6 Ke3 43.h5 Kd2 44.h6 Kxc2 45.h7 Kxb3 46.h8=Q Kxb2 

This is a pretty crazy position, but quite won for White - with enough time to think. Amazingly, there is.

47.Qe5 Kc3 48.Qxc5+ Kxd3 49.Qxa5 Kc3 50.Kf5 d3 51.Ke4 d2 52.Qc5+ Kb3 53.Qd4 Ka3 54.Qxd2 b3 

If only the pawn were on the a-file or the c-file, Black might have drawing chances.

55.Qc3 Ka2 56.Qc4 Ka3 57.Qc5+ Ka2 58.Qa5+ Kb1 59.Kd3 b2 60.Kc3 Kc1 61.Qg5+ Kb1 62.Qb5 Kc1 63.Qf1 checkmate

An amazing game for 3 0!

Zombie Walk

If you want to take the fun out of someone playing the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) against you, you can always count on... The Zombie Walk. That's not the official name of any of the Jerome variations, it's just a way of making the game a boring win. For White. 

perrypawnpusher - Mences
blitz, FICS, 1011

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+

4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ g6

In our earlier two games, my opponent had played 6...Ng6: perrypawnpusher - Mences, blitz, FICS, 2009 (1-0, 38) and perrypawnpusher - Mences, blitz, FICS, 2011 (1-0, 19).

Now we have the exciting possibilities of 7.Qxe5 d6, the Blackburne Defense, and 7.Qxe5 Qe7, the Whistler Defense. Which will it be??

7.Qxe5 Bxf2+8.Kxf2 Qf6+ 9.Qxf6+ Nxf6

Braaaiiinnnnssss...

As I pointed out as recently as last month (see "Short and Unbecoming")
Hmm...

At the cost of exchanging a won game for one in which he is a pawn down, Black has reached a Queenless middlegame that is not what every Jerome Gambiteer wishes for.

I have previously described such a game with the perky title "Nothing Happened".


So, here we go as I zombie-walk through almost another 40 moves.


I guess, if I use my imagination, I can pretend that I am Capablanca or Rubinstein exercising my "technique".


10.Nc3 d6 11.d4 Rf8 12.Rf1 Kg7 13.Kg1 Bd7

14.Bg5 Ng4 15.h3 Nf6 16.Bxf6+

Silly, but it moves things along.

16...Rxf6 17.Rxf6 Kxf6 18.Rf1+ Kg7 19.Nd5 Rc8 20.c4 c6 21.Nc3 Re8

22.b3 g5 23.Kh2 h5 24.g3 h4 25.g4 b5 26.Re1 bxc4 27.bxc4 Rf8 28.Kg2 Rb8 29.Rb1 Re8

For excitement, you can decide after 29...Rxb1 30.Nxb1 c5 if White should play 31.dxc5 or 31.e5.

30.Rb7 Re7 31.Rxa7 Kf6 32.Ra8 Kg7 33.a4 Be6 34.d5 cxd5 35. cxd5 Bf7

36.Rc8 Rb7 37.Nb5 Rb6 38.Rc6 Rxc6

After this, one of the zombies, er, pawns, has to promote.

39.dxc6 d5 40.c7 Be6 41.Nd6 dxe4 42.c8=Q Bxc8 43.Nxc8 Kf6 44.a5 Ke5 45.a6 e3 46. a7 e2 47. Kf2 e1=Q+ 48. Kxe1 Black resigned

 

Something New in Something Old

There is a phrase in chess, "annotation by result", which refers to the practice of judging a move or a series of moves by the outcome of the game. Won game? Good move! Lost game? Bad move!

Strong, inquisitive and creative players work against this tendency and are often rewarded with new ideas and positive results over-the-board.

Consider Yury V. Bukayev, whose opening discoveries have been mentioned here before. Recently, Yury has been looking at the Fritz Variation in the Two Knights Defense.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6  4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Nd4

To quote from "Having Fun with the Two Knights" from Chess Asia, Volume 11, Issue 3, 1995, by Bobby Ang,

By way of a short historical background, this is known as the Fritz/Schlechter Variation, used by Hans Berliner extensively in his rise to first place in the World Correspondence Championship. Indeed, it seems to be a lot more logical than the usual 5...Na5 which locks the knight out of play on the edge of the board.

Some of our readers might be wondering how this opening got its name. In fact, if you are in possession of the excellent book by Warren Goldman on Carl Schlechter which is a biography and a collection of most of the wins of "The Austrian Chess Wizard", you might have noticed that this variation does not even appear even once. Lest you think that he lost all his games with this line we hasten to note that this Defense was suggested by the German player Alexander Fritz to Schlechter who analysed it in Deutsche Schachzeitung in 1904, thus the name.

6.d6

This line has largely been dismissed by the sources that I consulted.

6...Qxd6 7.Bxf7+ Ke7 8.Bb3 Nxb3 9.axb3 h6 10.Nf3

Black has good play for his sacrificed pawn in Bogoljubov - Rubinstein, Stockholm, 1919. He enjoyed his "two Bishops" and transitioned to one of those Rooks-and-pawns engame that he was famous for winning. What else did Bogoljubov expect? seemed to be the concensus of the observers.

Yury, in an email he sent me, enthused 

I think this new gambit is a distant relative (!!) of the Classical Jerome Gambit. Thus, the difference of Black's and White's material in my gambit and in Classical Jerome Gambit is the same after the acceptance of these gambits; the initial position (3.Bc4) is the same; White plays Bc4xf7; White plays without the white-squared bishop in result; Black's king is on f7 a in variant of acceptance of gambits etc.

I think that the line is interesting enough that I would point it out, even if it were not "Jerome-ish", but I can't resist sharing an odd line from the Blackburne Shilling Jerome Gambit Declined: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 c6 3.Bc3 Nd4 4.Bxf7+ Ke7 (we have seen this before) 5.Ng5 (a bit unusual, but many people play the move in many Jerome variations) Nf6 6.Bb3 Nxb3 7.axb3 d5 8.exd5 h6 9.d6+ Qxd6 10.Nf3 and, indeed, we have reached that position from Bogoljubov - Rubinstein, above!

10...e4 11.Ng1

A gloomy retreat. An unkind annotator might say White is already lost.

An Italian correspondence game between Antritter and Balletti in 1969 introduced 11.Nh4, but White lost in 18 moves. A rather obscure game played in Tennessee in the United States, 15 years later, R. Carpenter - S. McGiffert, tried an improvement, but White lost in 13 moves.

Yet, Antritter and Carpenter were on the right trail.

I will leave it to readers to visit Yury's website and learn about the "Nh4-Bukayev-gambit" which gives White new hope! 

Obscure and Disreputable Enough?

Although this blog is mostly about the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) it sometimes wanders a bit further afield.

For example, a while back, in the post "London Calling...Seven Months of Blog", I mused

I also got wondering the other day: is there another totally obscure and disreputable tactical opening line or gambit that I could go digging for information about, while I'm researching the Jerome Gambit??

This exercise led to a whole slew of new posts and opening ideas: "The next best thing...", "The next worse thing...", "Worth a Second Look (Part 1)", "Worth a Second Look (Part 2)", "Worth a Second Look (Part 3)", "Wild!", "Wilder!", "Wildest!", "And Yet Wilder Still...", "More of The Next Best Thing..." and "Busch-Gass Gambit".

I was reading Bob Long's new Chess DVD catalog the other day, and noticed that Volume 2 of his "The Busy Man's Chess Openings" series by IM Andrew Martin is coming out. Sub-titled "Black Shockers" it focuses on winning from the Black side, and includes analysis of the following defense: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c5.

The line is as old as Greco, and seen today about as often as the Yeti, but in the past it was tried by Marshall, Schlechter, Rubinstein, Grunfeld, Euwe and Heidenfeld. O'Kelley de Galway, Bisguier and Westerinen played it a number of times. There's even an online Opening Report on it.

Might be worth checking out, at that.