Here continues the Jerome Gambit article that I wrote for Kaissiber, a decade ago.
William Cook’s interest in the Jerome Gambit seems to have peaked with his 3rd edition of Synopsis. Although the 4th edition, in 1888, announced "The present work is not a mere reprint of the last…” there were no changes in the Jerome Gambit analysis.
William Cook’s interest in the Jerome Gambit seems to have peaked with his 3rd edition of Synopsis. Although the 4th edition, in 1888, announced "The present work is not a mere reprint of the last…” there were no changes in the Jerome Gambit analysis.
Instead of pursing the Synopsis for a
further, 5th edition, Cook produced The Chess Player’s Compendium,
a similarly formatted book, in 1902. There was no mention of the Jerome Gambit
within. Likewise, Cook’s The Evolution of the Chess Openings in 1906 had
nothing to say about Alonzo Wheeler Jerome’s creation.
It was not yet time for the
Gambit’s eclipse. Cook’s earlier collaborators, E. Freeborough and C. E.
Rankin, introduced Chess Openings Ancient and Modern in 1889. In their
introduction to the Giuoco Piano, they seemed to put the Jerome Gambit in a
proper evolutionary perspective.
Away
from the main track there are numerous traps for the
unwary and inexperienced player,
but, as a rule, any attempt to hurry
the action will recoil on the
attempter. Numerous attempts of this
character have been made at various
times. The most interesting of
these are now classified as regular
openings, notably the Evans
Gambit, the two Knight’s Defense,
and Max Lange’s Attack. The
Jerome Gambit is a modern instance.
Even if the Jerome Gambit had its own chapter
as a regular opening, the tone of the narrative that accompanied the analysis
had turned skeptical, and the good humor was generally lacking
The Jerome Gambit
is an American invention, and a very risky
attack. It is described in the American
Supplement to Cook's Synopsis
as unsound but not to be trifled
with. The first player sacrifices two
pieces for two Pawns, and the
chances arising from the adversary's
King being displaced and drawn into
the centre of the board. "The
defense requires study, and is
sometimes difficult." It may be added
that it is equally difficult for
the first player to maintain the attack.
After 4…Kxf7; 5.Nxe5 Nxe5; 6.Qh5+,
Black may obtain a safe
game by …Kf8 (Col.3), or he may
follow out Mr. Steinitz's theory
that "the King is a strong
piece which not only possesses great power
for defensive purposes, but can be
made use of for the attack early in
the game, with the object of being
posted more favourably for the
ending in the center of the board…”
It
is very rarely practiced, but as a similar sacrifice of a minor
Piece for two pawns to stop Black
from castling may often occur in
the King’s Knight’s opening, we
give the Jerome Gambit as a
representative form of this kind of
attack on its merits, showing its
strength and weakness apart from
accidental circumstances, which in
actual play may materially affect
the result.
Andres
Clemente Vazquez, the Mexican chess champion, who had included one of his
Jerome Gambit wins (giving Rook odds) in the second edition of his Analisis
del juego de ajedres (1885), offered a much expanded chapter (based largely
on the American Supplement) in his 1889 third edition of Analisis.
Moving into the1890s, however, the
Jerome Gambit began walking on unsteady ground. Although Gossip included
analysis in his new book, The Chess Player’s Vade Mecum (1891), he
dropped any mention of the Jerome in the 2nd edition his Theory of the Chess
Openings of the same year. (He had ignored it as well in his The Chess
Players’ Text Book, written two years earlier.) Chess Openings Ancient
and Modern reappeared in 1893 and 1896, but the analysis had nothing new,
and was largely repeating itself.
Time suddenly ran out on the Jerome
Gambit as the 1890s came to a close, with the publication, in 1899, of Mr.
Blackburne’s Games at Chess, which included the game thereafter treated by most sources as the refutation of the attack
Amateur - Blackburne, London , “about 1880” (notes by
Blackburne) 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6
3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ I used to call this
the Kentucky opening. For a while after its
introduction it was greatly
favored by certain players, but
they soon grew tired of it (Blackburne)
4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ g6
7.Qxe5 d6 Not to be outdone in
generosity 8.Qxh8 Qh4 9.0-0 Nf6
10.c3 Ng4 11.h3 Bxf2+ 12.Kh1 Bf5
13.Qxa8 Qxh3+ 14.gxh3 Bxe4# 0-1
In
addition, the BCC article included suggestions – “he should have
attempted to free his pieces by 9.d4 before castling” and “the only hope he had
was 10.Qd8,” which would have strengthened White’s game considerably.
This
“Blackburne defense”
starting with 6…g6 was played by D.P. Norton and Lt. G.N. Whistler, in
correspondence games with Jerome back in 1876, and games were published in the June and
December issues of the American Chess Journal of that year. Both players
offered a Rook, with 7…Qe7 instead of Blackburne’s 7…d6, and developed winning
attacks. Three years later, Jerome left the Rook and tried an improvement
(8…Qf4+) in a correspondence game with Daniel Jaeger, but he was equally
unsuccessful (0-1,45).
Later
writers appear to have overlooked or ignored this coverage in the Brooklyn
Chess Chronicle and the American Chess Journal.
After the
blow of the appearance of the Amateur – Blackburne miniature, it is true
that the Jerome Gambit lived on for some years in reprinted editions of
previous tomes (for example, fifteen editions of James Mortimer’s The Chess
Player’s Pocket-Book and Manual of the Openings, from 1888 through 1906),
--although not without embarrassment. Gossip’s analysis in The Chess
Player’s Vade Mecum (1891), for example, was re-packaged,
unchanged, as a chapter in Gossip and F. J. Lee’s later The Complete Chess
Guide (1903, 1905, 1907, 1910) where it appeared after Lee, in one of his
own chapters, had asserted
We have therefore
eliminated obsolete openings and confined
ourselves merely to a brief
examination of a dozen of the leading
debuts...; omitting those openings
in which the defense is declared by
the most competent theorists to be
weak or inferior, as for example
Philidor's and Petroff's Defenses
to the Kings Knight's opening; the
Sicilian; the Greco Counter Gambit;
Center Counter Gambit;
Fianchettoes, Blackwar [sic] and
Jerome Gambit, etc.
Emmanuel Lasker seems to have had
the best, if not the last, word on the gambit, responding to a letter to “Our
Question Box” in the March 1906 issue of Lasker’s Chess Magazine
No; the Jerome
gambit is not named after St. Jerome .
His
penances, if he did any, were in
atonement of rather minor
transgressions compared with the
gambit.
[to be continued]