Entertaining and Educational

An email from Bill Wall, whose Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) and related games are always entertaining and usually educational, to boot:

From your last blog, I looked at my games with anyone playing 3...Na5. I have had 5 players play it against me. I delayed Bxf7 one move.

Wall - Ali
Chess.com, 2010
notes by Bill

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Na5

4.Bd5 Nf6 5.Bxf7+ Kxf7 6.Nxe5+ Ke8

6...Kg8 looks safer.

7.0-0 Nxe4? 8.Re1

8.Qh5+ looks best.

8...Nc5??

8...Qh4.

9.Qh5+ g6 10.Nxg6+ Ne6 11.Nxh8+ Ke7 12.d4 Nc4 13.Bf4 Qe8 14.Qh4 checkmate

It's Hero Time!

I freely admit that many of my Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) games are ones in which I give "Jerome Gambit odds", where I use a refuted opening to "level the playing field" against a lower-rated player. Against a higher-rated player, I do not need an esoteric opening to lose, I can do it all by myself, thank-you-very-much.

In the latest batch of games played at FICS, sent to me by Jerome Gambit Gemeinde member and chessfriend Welton Vaz, from Brazil, I discovered the player klanga, who has taken up the Jerome this  year, and who plays it, apparently, against all comers. In the following game he takes on someone with a rating almost twice his own.

klanga (864) - TalesdeSousa (1720)
blitz, FICS, 2011

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bc4 Bc5 5.Bxf7+

The Italian Four Knights Jerome Gambit. Certainly nothing to worry about, Black figures.

5...Kxf7 6.0-0 Ng4

Let us just get about checkmating this tyro...

7.d4 Bxd4

Perhaps at this slip, klanga chuckled. Why would such a higher-rated player bother wasting a strong move on me, so early in a busted opening?

8.Ng5+ Kg8 9.Qxg4

White has recovered his sacrificed piece. No matter: the stronger player can inflict structural damage on White's pawns, then open up the game and use his superior strategic skills to wrest the point away.

9...Bxc3 10.bxc3 d5 11.Qf3 dxe4

Take that, you misplaced Queen!

12.Qf7 checkmate

The Gemeinde salutes its newest member, klanga!

Betcha Can't Eat Just One

In the 1960s, the Frito-Lay company launched a commercial for its potato chips that featured the challenge "Betcha can't eat just one" because the product was so tasty.

After yesterday's post on this blog, "A Snack", I found the following short game to be irresistible, as well.


maranthiru - FaceOfDeath
standard, FICS, 2011

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Na5

Still a variation without a name.

4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Kf6

Wow. This move has all of the "calories" of yesterday's 5...Ke7 (the risk of having the King and Queen on the same diagonal, with White's Bc1-g5+ a looming possibility), but none of the "nutrients" (the ability to play ...Nf6 to prevent the White Bishop's skewer).

For the record, there are 42 games in The Database with this position. White scores 83%, which tells you something.

However, in only 5 of those games did White play the "best" move, 6.Qh5, and in those games White scored 80%. (Yes, another typical Jerome-ish outcome: the best move scores worse than the lesser alternatives.)

A cautionary tale: Pokal - Lissi, blitz, FICS, 2011 continued 6.Qh5 Qe7 7.Ng6 [7.Qf5#] Qxe4+ 8.Kf1 Qxg6 9.Qxa5 Qxc2 10.Nc3 Qd3+ 11.Kg1 b6 12.Nd5+ Kf7 13.Qc3 Qe4 14.Qb3 Qe1 checkmate.

6.d4 d6

This move looks as "reasonable" as yesterday's 7.d5, but it ends the game quickly.

Black had little better than the retreat 6...Ke7, when 7.Nc3 is good for White, for example 7...c6 (keeping the Knight off of d5, but stranding his own Knight) 8.b4 d6 (offering a trade of Knights, but White sees further) 9.bxa5 dxe5 10.Bg5+ Nf6 11.dxe5 and White wins back his sacrificed piece, remaining a pawn up with the better position.

7.Qf3+ Bf5 8.Qxf5+ Ke7 9.Qf7 checkmate

A Snack

Some chess games, even Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) games, are a veritible banquet of strategy and tactics, sometimes leading to great satisfaction and sometimes leading to indigestion.

By comparison, the following game is a bit of a snack. Yet, it is still filling.

CarlosFonseca - gianbagia
blitz, FICS, 2011

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Na5

Instead of entering the paths of the Giuoco Piano with 3...Bc5 or the Two Knights Defense with 3...Nf6, Black decides to pick on White's light-squared Bishop.

White does well enough, now, with 4.Nxe5, but he chooses an exciting alternative.

4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Ke7 6.d4 Nf6

White has two pawns for his sacrificed piece, plus one of Black's Knights is offside, and Black's King is in danger and in the way of his pieces.

The game is about even, which means, at the club level in blitz play, that the second player has to be careful.

7.Nd3

Curiously, of the 50 games in The Database with the position given in the above diagram, only one has this very reasonable move.

White's reasoning is impeccible: with the enemy King and Queen lined up on the same diagonal, Bc1-g5+ would be a deadly skewer, if it were not for Black's protective Knight on f6, so why not try to drive the Knight away?

7...d5

What would be a useful move at another time and in another place merely furthers White's plan in the here-and-now.

8.e5 Ne4 9.f3

Black could have left his Knight at f6 and allowed it to be captured with 8...Qe8. Instead, he moved it to a place where it covered the dangerous checking square g5.

Unfortunately, as White's move shows, the Knight is just as vulnerable at e4.

Sadly, Black's best move now is to retreat the Knight to f6, give the piece up, and resign himself to being a pawn down with a still-unsafe King.

Instead, Black resigned

Yum!



(This is my 1,250th post to this blog. I have been posting daily since the first one. I do not know how much longer I will be able to post daily, but even if I "slow down" I will continue to post multiple times per week. - Rick)

Say, What??



ARUJ - AlanBes, FICS, 2011

With White ready to make his 42nd move in the above position, it looks like another successful Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) is about to come to an end with a well-earned "1-0".

The game did end, without further play, as a draw, however, as both players ran out of time.

Oh, well.

Sunday Tournament Update

It is clear now that AsceticKingK9 will take top honors in the current ChessWorld Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) Thematic Tournament.

The 15-player, double round robin contest, is over 80% complete, and AsceticKingK9 leads with 25 points out of 25 games (with three games left to complete).

Second place has been sewed up by mckenna 215, with 23.5 points out of 28 games. His 84% score is impressive, as well.

Third through fifth places are still undecided. Knight32 has completed his run, with 18.5 points out of 28 games. Braken has 18.5 points out of 27 games, so, with one final win, he could pass Knight32. However, Rikiki00 has 15.5 points out of 23 games, and could bypass both Knight32 and Braken with enough wins of his own.

Or is it??

Longtime blog Readers may know that I used to do a lot of writing for the now very, very quiet Chessville site: lots of short fiction, lots of book reviews. It was a great "neighborhood" to hang out in.

Often when a new book came out, especially if it covered an unorthodox chess opening or was a self-published effort, I got a review copy as fast as possible and shared my impressions with Readers.

I have been able to do only a few reviews here at jeromegambit.blogspot.com. (I plan to review Eric Jego's English-language book on the Blackmar Diemer Gambit as soon as it arrives!)

Imagine my excitement today when I was wandering through Amazon.com and discovered Chess Openings: New Theory, by James Alan Riechel. I was ready to send off for a review copy in an instant!

I mean, who would not be thrilled by

Ten -- count them: ten! -- chapters of brand-spanking new opening theory in the game of chess, including -- believe it or not! -- three brand-new openings in chess never seen before in the long history of the game! (That's hundreds of years, folks!) Also, major contributions -- and all brand-spanking new theory, by the way -- are made in the Benko Gambit, Queen's Gambit Accepted, Center-Counter, Danish Gambit, Scotch Opening, French Defense, and Bird Opening. Major, major, major -- three times over! -- contributions are made in the French Defense. Two difficult lines for Black are repaired, and I offer the world the French Gambit! Each chapter has a one-page introduction, and each chapter has at least one section of brand-spanking new opening theory!

Whoa...!

Of course, one eyebrow went up when I checked out the author's USCF rating (class B, like me) and read his Amazon bio

The author lives in Pasadena, California, and is employed as a math instructor at Mathnasium in South Pasadena, California. He hopes to complete a PhD in computer science at Caltech, with a dissertation in linear-time partial sorting algorithms, and algorithms for searching partially sorted data. On the weekends, he gets to visit his cat, Mr. T-Rex, a purebred Cornish Rex, at his family’s house in Glendale, California. In his spare time, the author works on research, and writes chess books!

The other eyebrow climbed a bit when I learned that the book has all of 30 pages. You do not need a PhD in computer science to figure out that that is, on the average, 3 pages per chapter, with one of those pages being, as advertised, an introduction.

Still, it's tempting, isn't it?

Or is it??