A couple of years ago I noticed an odd Jerome Gambit variation that appeared only about "Once A Year", which was a good thing, as it included a slip by White that led to a quick checkmate of White. "Quick" as in "a handful of moves" and as in "very little time elapsed" as the games were played at lightning speed.
In January I realized that "It must be a new year..." Now I have to admit that sometimes lightning "strikes twice". Pay attention, and don't let this happen to you!
Teterow - tepes
lightning game, FICS, 2011
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+
4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.d4 Qf6
7.dxe5 Qxf2 checkmate
"Kennedy Kid" Jon is on the road again, home from Haiti briefly, now off to Guatemala for a month to improve his Spanish language skills.
As I did with his stay in Uganda, as well as Haiti, I have begun to learn about chess in Guatemala.
For example, I learned that Silvia Carolina Mazariegos was Guatemalan Women's Chess Champion for the years 1981 - 1994. She returned as champion 2001, 2002 and 2004. During the same span of time the Men's title was dominated by Carlos Armando Juárez Flores, who was champion in 1980, 1983-88, 1991, 1993-1995, and 1998-2007.
The Guatemalan Defense, 1.e4 b6 2.d4 Ba6, was covered in The Myers Openings Bulletin (New MOB No. 1, 3, and 4) in 1992 and 1993. Myers presented three games from the 1930s played by Hans Cohn, from his 1947 book Ajedrez en Guatemala, which had a chapter on "Defensa Guatemalteca". The MOB also gave the first part of a 1939 game by Georges Koltanowski (vs Cohn) and the first part of 1943 game by Reuben Fine, from a blindfold simultaneous exhibition.
Wrote Myers
It [the chapter on Defensa Guatemalteca] starts with a long quote from a 1913 magazine article by emanuel Lasker, expressing Cohn's opening philosophy. Summing up, it says that the ideas lefense will stop any attack, lead to counterattack, and enable Black to play for a win "si el blanco desconoce sus posibilidades o las sobreestima" [if White doesn't know about its possibilities or overestimates them]; I haven't seen Lasker's original German, but I found two of those Spanish words to be interesting: "desconoce" means doesn't know about, but it can have a sense of deliberately ignoring. As for "sobreestima", one might expect White to have problems when he underestimates an unfamiliar defense, but the Spanish word, which also means having too much respect for something, makes sense. Fear of the unknown affects judgement. When faced by a surprising opening a player may imagine dangers which are not really there. There or not, he'll spend time looking for them and trying to defend against them.
Hmmm, sounds like an opening I know...
If Jon gets around to playing any more Jerome Gambits (see "Artificial Ignorance" parts 1 and 2), I'll let you know.
The Alterman Gambit Guide
White Gambits
GM Boris Alterman
Quality Chess (2010)
softcover, 448 pages
http://chesslessons.wordpress.com/
I think that beginning chess players should not concern themselves greatly about learning chess openings.
If pressured on the point, I usually suggest something like Tartakower and du Mont's 500 Master Games of Chess, which is available, affordable, and gives the reader a lot of interesting games (organized by opening) with sprightly notes. There is a lot of chess to learn in going over the games; and opening knowledge can be acquired by osmosis.
If someone persists, either out of stubbornness or because of making consistent gains in chess skill and ability, I am likely, these days, to recommend The Alterman Gambit Guide, at least for play with the White pieces.
The author presents 7 double-e-pawn openings, and lines of attack against the Caro Kann, Sicilian and French Defenses. The focus is on gambit play, including the Danish Gambit, the Urusov Gambit, the Cochrane Gambit (vs the Petroff), the Evans Gambit, and even the Morra Gambit (vs the Sicilian).
The Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments, Bibliography & Key to symbols used
Foreword by the Author
The Danish Gambit
The Urusov Gambit
The Philidor
The Cochrane Gambit
The Morphy Attack
The Max Lange Attack
The Evans Gambit
The Panov Attack
The Morra Gambit
The Milner-Barry Gambit
Games Index
Variations Index
GM Alterman makes a good case for learning about dynamic chess play through the use of gambits, and his presentation – the choice of short, thematic games; followed by longer, more analyzed battles; followed by theory of the opening – is very effective.
At almost 450 pages, The Alterman Gambit Guide White Gambits covers each opening deep enough that the player can feel confident that he or she has enough "book" knowledge to set the pace of the game. Furthermore, learning each opening in this way maximizes the understanding of attacking themes and strategies that are the "meat" of most club matches – the middle game.
Even if the reader eventually moves on to the more "grandmasterly" Spanish Game, with all its subtleties and nuances, it will be with a tactical knowledge that will always come in handy.
The author is preparing a Gambit Guide of Black Gambits, soon to be released. I have had it on pre-order for weeks.
(Take a look at a sample of The Alterman Gambit Guide White Gambits.)
If there is something more embarassing than losing to the Jerome Gambit (even if you do not merit entry to the "George J. Dougherty Club") it has to be giving "Jerome Gambit odds" in a game, having your opponent put his Queen en prise, and you missing the capture... The saving grace in the following game is that I still had a strong game after my opponent's slip and my blunder, and I was still able to bring the point home.
perrypawnpusher - cinamon
blitz, FICS, 2011
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 h6
The Semi-Italian Opening.
4.0-0 Nf6 5.Nc3 Bc5
The Semi-Italian Four Knights Game. An earlier game of ours had continued 5...a6 6.a3 Bc5 7.Bxf7+, perrypawnpusher - cinamon, blitz, FICS, 2010 (1-0, 28)
6.Bxf7+
The Semi-Italian Four Knights Jerome Gambit.
6...Kxf7 7.Nxe5+ Nxe5 8.d4 Qe7
Earlier this year perrypawnpusher - cinamon, blitz, FICS, 2011, continued instead with the equally strong 8...Bxd4, etc (1-0, 25).
9.dxc5 Qxc5 10.Be3 Qc4 11.f4 Qxe4
This move totally shocked me. I remember thinking: I had NO IDEA that he could play that move! And now my Bishop is hanging!! How did I ever overlook that move??
12.Re1
Of course, after I quickly protected my Bishop, I realized why I had considered 11...Qxe4 impossible: because the pawn was protected by my Knight!
12...Qf5 13.fxe5 Qxe5
I took a deep, calming breath, and realized that while I was a pawn down, I had plenty of compensation in terms of better development and my opponent's uneasy King.
All I had to do was keep that panic-filled voice in the back of my head (What if you lose this game?? What a humiliation!!) quiet.
14.Bd4 Qd6
Protecting his Knight, possibly thinking to exchange Queens if I move my Bishop, maybe even thinking of sneaking in ...Ng4. He blocks the d-pawn and delays his development, however.
15.Ne4 Nxe4
"Chopping wood" is one defensive strategy, but here it helps me activate my Rook and exposes a future weak point at g7.
16.Rxe4 Rf8
Given enough time, Black hopes to get his King to safety.
However, he does not have enough time.
17.Qf3+
Even stronger was 17.Qg4, threatening mate at g7. Mate follows the defensive try 17...Rg8: 18.Qh5+ g6 19.Qf3+ Qf6 20.Qxf6#
The tricky part of 17.Qg4 is to see that after 17...g5, White still has 18.Qh5+ Kg8 19.Rf1 and there are too many pieces bearing down on the Black King to escape mate, even if Black exchanges Rooks.
17...Kg8 18.Qb3+ Kh8 19.Rd1
Switching to harassing the Queen (20.Rg4 focused on the King). My opponent must have been running short of time, and I gave him more to think about.
19...Qg6 20.Re3 b6 21.Rg3 Black resigned
The Jerome Gambit often contains the opportunity for Black to kick the White Queen around, and such a thing is almost irresistible. In the following game, the "Jerome pawns" get a chance to become almost irresistible as well.
perrypawnpusher - yuriko
blitz, FICS, 2011
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 h6
The Semi-Italian Opening.
4.0-0 Nf6 5.Nc3 Bc5
The Semi-Italian Four Knights Game.
6.Bxf7+
The Semi-Italian Four Knights Jerome Gambit.
6...Kxf7 7.Nxe5+ Nxe5 8.d4 Bxd4 9.Qxd4 d6
10.f4 Nc6 11.Qd3 Re8 12.Bd2 Nb4
In the Jerome Gambit, some ideas are almost irresistible: Knight harasses Queen!
In our 2010 game, my opponent played 12...Kg8, and only after 13.Rae1 did he succumb to 13...Nb4, in perrypawnpusher - yuriko, blitz, FICS, 2010 (1-0, 31). Earlier this year he showed that he had learned his lesson, playing 13...Be6 in perrypawnpusher - yuriko, blitz, FICS, 2011 (1/2-1/2, 37).
13.Qc4+
I always like to remember that here Black resigned, in perrypawnpusher - susant, blitz, FICS, 2010
13...Kf8 14.Qxb4 b6 15.Rae1 Ba6 16.Rf2 Ng4 17.Rf3 Kg8
Yuriko certainly has the right idea: move #12 only gave back the "extra" piece. It is still time to attack and defend.
18.h3 Nf6 19.Nd5 c5
Still harassing the Queen.
It was probably better to chop some wood with 19...Nxd5 20.exd5 Rxe1+ 21.Bxe1 Qe7, thinking of the drawable Bishops-of-opposite-colors endgame that might be reached, even a pawn down.
20.Nxf6+ Qxf6 21.Qc3 Qg6
By not exchanging Queens, Black takes on additional risk. Opposite-color-Bishop middlegames favor the attacker. The Queen move makes g7 more vulnerable.
22.Rg3 Qh7 23.f5 Bb7 24.f6 g6
25.Qf3
After the game Rybka 3 suggested the clearance sacrifice 25.f7+ and after 25...Kxf7 26.Rf1+ Kg8 27.Qb3+. The same idea would work against 25...Qxf7.
25...Rf8 26.Bc3 Rae8 27.Qg4 g5 28.Rge3 Bc8 29.Qg3 Rf7
30.Qxd6 Qg6 31.e5 Kh7
The blockading 31...Be6, so natural in Bishops-of-opposite-colors positions, would have been stronger.
32.e6 Bxe6 33.Rxe6 Qxc2 34.Rxe8 Black resigned
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!
