Modern Guide to Gambits

Wow!

Nikolai Kalinichenko, a correspondence grandmaster, has written The Club Player's Modern Guide To Gambits: Fighting Chess from the Get-go (Russell Enterprises, 2019).

I was excited, and, since his focus was on "club players", and he was looking at "fighting chess from the get-go" I could not wait to see what he had written on the Jerome Gambit.

Checking out the table of contents, I was pleased to see that his list of gambits included some of the offbeat gambits, such as the Cochrane Gambit, the Latvian Gambit, the Sicilian Wing Gambit, the Icelandic Gambit, the von Hennig-Schara Gambit, the Englund Gambit, and even the Blackmar Diemer Gambit.

Alas, no Jerome Gambit.

Even if it had been a chapter on "How to Defeat the Jerome Gambit", it would have been interesting and welcome. (I guess you will have to settle for the blog posts "An International Master Refutes the Jerome Gambit" and "A GM Faces the Jerome Gambit [Part 1 and 2]").

Oh, well, maybe next time.

Jerome Gambit: Seriously?

I just received my latest batch of Jerome Gambit games from Bill Wall, which includes the following miniature, a reminder that chess is often played for fun, and not always taken seriously.

Wall, Bill - Guest963500
PlayChess.com, 2019

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ 

4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ 

Wow. Bill forsakes his favorite 6.d4.

6...Ng6 7.Qxc5

And, now he bypasses the "nudge", 7.Qd5+.

7...b6

Perhaps expecting 8.Qe3 Bb7.

8.Qd5+ Kf8 9.Qxa8 Black resigned

Readers, please do not snicker.

Recall the quickie Sicilian Wing Gambit game: Shirazi - Peters, Berkeley, 1984: 1.e4 c5 2.b4 cxb4 3.a3 d5 4.exd5 Qxd5 5.axb4 Qe5+ White resigned.

Also: from the final position, above, another game in The Database continued to move 20, when White resigned.