[continued from previous post]
Next, I decided to check out the 19 Jerome Gambit games (all from online play) in The Database where the player of the black pieces was rated 2500+, looking, again, for another GM "in real life".
I quickly tossed Hera, MaxBot, GriffySr, Sly, Dampfwalze, wkw, birdcostello, Singularity, BlackDemon, and AnderssenA at FICS, as they were all computers. They were strong - Singularity and BlackDemon were rated over 2700 on the site - but they were not human.
That left me with Topper76, at at redhotpawn.com, who I had already tried to track down (see "Jerome Gambit: More GMs? Part 1"). There were also psv2398 (account closed), amaidel (St. Petersburg, Russia, FIDE 2347), RL12 (San Juan de los Morros, Cuba, FIDE 2333), Sveti14 (FIDE 2428 with the note "This player uses chess computer assistance"), Enialios (an open account but no FIDE rating listed) and PArnaudov, at lichess.org (the last one had already been looked at by Cliff).
Whew!
So, my search to find another human grandmaster who had faced the Jerome Gambit, even in online play, did not progress beyond the original investigation by "Cliff Hardy". No surprise there; after all, he is the private investigator, not me.
But I will still keep my (private) eyes open!
