Jerome Gambit: Early Sources

 

From time to time I look for games or resources that might have insprired Alonzo Wheeler Jerome's interest in the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) 

Recently I have been going through Peter J. Monte's The Classical Era of Modern Chess (2014) which includes his attempt, in part, to "record all openings that were written down between 1497 (Lucena) and 1597 (Gianutio)". Eventually he extended this examination further, "to a period embracing approximately 150 years of the modern European game."

I hoped, in part, to find some written Italian sources that would lead to Tonetti's gambit game of 1863 which predated Jerome's analysis that came a decade later. (Relevant to this is a discussion about the rule changes that came about during that period - see Yury V. Bukayev's "Who is the 1st inventor of JG in chess – A.Jerome or G.Tonetti?    The new approach [Part1]")

I was most successful in finding the roots of what I have referred to as the Abrahams Jerome Gambit, 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Bc5 3.Bxf7+ - called such due to the fact that Gerald Abrahams referred to the line, arising out of the Bishop's Opening, as the Jerome Gambit in his The Chess Mind (1951) and The Pan Book of Chess (1965).

Looking at Giulio Cesare Polerio's Ordini Manuscript (1594) - Ordini di giuochi degli scacchi in diversi modi, cosi di mano, come sottomano, cio e in offenza, e dife[n]za co[n] altri bellissimi partiti, sono di Guilio Cesare Polerio alias l'Apruzzese. Giocandosi del Pari - Monte writes

The Bishop's Opening: In the Classical Variation (2...Bc5) the new 3.Bxf7+ etc. is introduced...

In Polerio's Doazan Manuscript he goes further

The Sortie 3.Bxf7+ Kxf7 4.Qh5+ etc. (Ordini 28) is extensively elaborated in D13 and D34.

Looks familiar, yes?

Perhaps I should now refer to 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Bc5 3.Bxf7+ as the Polerio Gambit. One problem might be that there is already a Polerio Gambit in the King's Gambit (although it is also referred to as the Muzio Gambit): 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3. f3 g5 4.Bc4 g4 5.0-0

I continue to examine The Classical Era of Modern Chess with hopes to find proto-Jerome Gambit lines.

Jerome Gambit: Smash!

 

The Jerome Gambit can be an awesome tool of destruction.

scwymstr - JAM99

RedHotPawn.com, 2022

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ 

4...Kxf7 5.h4 

White outranks his opponent, he has given "Jerome Gambit odds", and he is ready to Smash! like Hulk. 

(See "Good Fortune" for an earlier reference.) 

5...d6 6.Ng5+ Kg6 

Everyone knows that the Jerome Gambit is a pile of junk that is guaranteed to self-destruct. (Ha!)

Here Black has a creative plan to stop White from playing Qh5+.

7.Qf3 

Oh, dear. Now Black is busted.

7...Bd4

Stockfish 15 suggests that Black can limit his deficit to the exchange by playing 7...Bxf2+ 8.Kxf2 h5 9.Qf7+ Kh6 10.d3 Qf6+ 11.Ke1 Qxf7 12.Nxf7+ Kh7 13.Bg5 Nf6 14.Nxh8 Kxh8. 

8.h5+ Kh6 9.Nf7 checkmate

Blackburne Shilling Jerome Gambit: Accept or Refuse?

I know that it has been said that the best way to refute a gambit is to accept it, but at least at the club level declining a sacrifice is popular amongst defenders who throw out the challenge If you want me to take the material, then I won't.

KnightBiker - snob

5 0 blitz, FICS, 2022

1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nc6 3.Nf3 Nd4 

The Blackburne Shilling Gambit.

4.Bxf7+ 

The Blackburne Shilling Jerome Gambit.

4...Ke7 

The Blackburne Shilling Jerome Gambit Declined.

Surprisingly, The Database has 829 games with Black declining the Bishop this way. Not surprisingly, White scores 70%.

The player as Black in this game, snob, has 160 games with the Blackburne Shilling Jerome Gambit in The Database, so he is no newbie. Of those games, 52 involve 4...Ke7, where he has scored 33% (slightly above the average for the move).

5.Bc4 

White has a pawn advantage, and his King is much safer than Black's.

Interestingly, in 15 of snob's games in The Database his opponent played 5.Bxg8 - a very reasonable choice - yet snob scored 47%. That is the Jerome Gambit world for you - at blitz speed, with club players.

5...d6 6.d3 h6 

Black does not want an enemy piece to arrive at g5, but this move weakens light squares.

7.Nh4 Nf6 

An oversight that occurs in blitz play. Perhaps Black had been expecting and was focused upon 7.Nxd4.

8.Ng6+ Kd7 9.Nxh8 Kc6 

White has grabbed a Rook and expects not to have to pay his Knight for the honor.

Black's King heads toward greater danger.

10.Ng6 Be7 11.Nxe7+ Qxe7 

12.c3 

White could have simply castled, but his choice of this move - with both a threat to the Knight and the opening of an attacking line for the Queen - shows that the attack will continue.

12...Ne6 13.Qa4+ Kb6 14.Qb5 checkmate

Jerome Gambit: It Takes More Than A Move

I like the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+).

I play the Jerome Gambit.

I am glad that others play the Jerome Gambit.

Still, I have my favorite moves for the defense.

Consider the following game.

Petasluk - faredce

3 0 blitz, FICS, 2022

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ 

4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Ke6 7.f4 Nd3+ 

Creative and cool.

Anyone who has read Aron Nimzowitsch's The Blockade will recognize the idea behind this move.

Something similar is equally deadly for Black, when the d-pawn is blocked, which in turn blocks the Bishop, which then keeps the Rook from entering the game. 

I have looked at this move before, in "Brilliant, but Not Sound" and "Jerome Gambit: The Hurrieder I Go, The Behinder I Get", where you will see Petasluk mentioned as well.

There are 26 games with this position in The Database, where White scores 65% - despite the fact that Stockfish 15 rates Black as about 4 pawns better.

8.cxd3 Bd4 

Here is a clue that helps explain the statistics above. It takes more than one move to make a defense.

In this game (and in four earlier ones) instead of retreating or protecting, Black moves his threatened Bishop to the improved a1-h8 diagonal where it can not be threatened by White's pawns.

This kind of oversight can happen in a blitz game.

(For perspective, no games in The Database have the top recommended move 8...d5.)

9.Qd5+ Black resigned

White will take the long diagonal - and the Bishop.

Jerome Gambit: Huh?

Sometimes, the result of a game is a puzzlement.

SorryYouLose - Pinckman

7 0 blitz, Chess.com, 2022

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

The Blackburne Shilling Gambit. 

4.Bxf7+ 

The Blackburne Shilling Jerome Gambit

4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Ke6 6.f4 

Supporting the advanced Knight, at the risk of allowing ...Qh4+.

The main line was seen in Wall - Ferny, PlayChess.com, 2018: 6.c3 d6 7.cxd4 dxe5 8.Qb3+ = Kf6 (8...Ke7) 9.dxe5+ Kxe5 10.Nc3 Nf6 (10...Be6) 11.d4+ Qxd4 (11...Kd6) 12.f4+ Kd6 13.Nb5+ Black resigned 

6...h5 

Interesting. Black, in turn, prevents a check by White's Queen. The Database shows that the line has scored 50% - 17 wins, 17 losses. 

Stockfish 15 recommends, instead 6...Qh4+ 7.g3 Qh3 8.Nf3 Nxf3+ 9.Qxf3 d5 with advantage to Black. 

7.c3 Nc6 8.Qb3+ d5

9.Ng6 

White goes for tactics. More solid would be 9.O-O.

9...Rh6 10.Nxf8+ White resigned 

White's resignation is a puzzlement.

It is not hard to imagine the game continuing 10...Kf7 11.Qxd5+ Qxd5 12.exd5 Nd8 13.Ne6 Nxe6 14.dxe6+ Rxe6+ 15.Kf2 Nf6 when White would be 2 pawns ahead - although Stockfish 15 (35 ply) rates the position about equal.

Jerome Gambit: Prognostication

 

Although there are 5 games yet to be completed in the third round of the "Giuoco Piano Game" tournament at Chess.com, it seems likely that I will be joined in the fourth round by xyz7, DouglasEngle, i1slamov, auswebby, joro_videv, graintrader69, and Johnny71.

Probably there will be two groups of four players each.

In any event, I will be the next-to-lowest ranked player.

I still intend on playing the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) in every game as White. My results, good and bad, will be posted here.

Anatoly Karpov & Jerome Gambit (Part 6)

                                         

                                                 Anatoly Karpov & Jerome Gambit (Part 6)

  

(by Yury V. Bukayev) 

 

 

The Part 6 of this my work is about the World Champion, Top GM Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov and about his most important Jerome-ish game I know.  

 

These days everyone in the chess world thinks about his health, about the incident in Moscow, because he was a World Champion, the strongest chess player during a very long time, and there are some other “very positive” and “very negative” causes too. I can’t exclude that his thought was about some bright chess event or even about his ‘My Best Games’ up to that dark moment. 

 

Anatoly Karpov’s most important Jerome-ish game was played in the last round of the Top GMs’ tournament, when both opponents of the game pretended to the first place. 

 

Top GM Shirov, Alexei – WCC Top GM Karpov, Anatoly  

 

Vienna Millenium Tournament 

Vienna, 1996 

 

1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.Nf3 e6 5.Be2 Ne7 6.0-0 c5 7.c4 Nbc6 8.Nc3 dxc4 9.dxc5 Nd5 10.Nd4 Nxc3 11.bxc3 Bxc5 12.Nxf5 exf5 

 

I’ll not comment this initial stage of the game, but since this exchange of pieces we can start to see an absolutely open position where White has an advantage. 

 

13.Bxc4?! Bxf2+! 

 

Probably, Alexei Shirov missed this World Champion’s Jerome-ish blow. The game continued: 

 

14.Kh1 Qxd1! ,  

 

and Black got a better position here. But, in my opinion, the best way for White was the following one: 14.Kxf2! Qh4+ 15.Kg1! Qxc4. It is one of typical Jerome-ish situations. I disagree with the commentators who say that Black has a serious advantage here, and they haven’t shown a proof of it. The situation is complicated. Here is one of possible variations: 16.Rxf5!? Qxc3!? 17.Rb1! AN Qd4+!? 18.Qxd4 Nxd4 19.Rf2 b6 (19…0-0-0!, although White also continues to attack here successfully in spite of Black’s active counter-play) 20.Ba3 Rc8 21.Bd6! (with the idea 22.Rbf1) with White’s excellent compensation for a pawn, and even more. 

 

We can see the large psychological effect of Anatoly Karpov’s Jerome-ish blow 13…Bxf2+, and it brings this move closer to the Jerome gambit – to its standard system, to its deferred systems including strong ones. 

 

Contact the author:  istinayubukayev@yandex.ru  

 

© 2022 Yury V. Bukayev (Copyright © Bukayev Yury Vyacheslavovich 2022). All rights reserved.  

[A legal using of this investigation with a reference to it is permitted  

and doesn’t require author’s consent.]