Jerome Gambit: Second Worst

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• Readers, I try to keep better track of these things, I really do, and, when I find them, in the interest of balance, I share them.
• Recently I ran across a forum discussion at Chess.com, from about a year a half ago. The topic was "What is the worst opening?"
• chesster3145 shared his personal top 3 worst chess openings, and, of course, his 2nd worst was

The Jerome Gambit in the Italian (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. Bxf7+??) which is completely refuted by not one, but two brain-dead simple lines. 4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ and now both 6...Ke6 and 6...Kf8 refute the gambit, although 6...Ke6 requires some homework.

Certainly, chesster3145's opinion should be respected, and I appreciate his perspective; although I wonder if refuting the Jerome Gambit is all that "brain-dead simple" - at least in the world of the online club player.
I just checked with The Database, and I noticed 1,120 Jerome Gambit games with 6...Ke6, in which White scored 54%; and 674 Jerome Gambit games with 6...Kf8, in which White scored 50%.
(Of course, I challenged chesster3145 to a game. We will see.) 

Jerome Gambit Coverage Recovered

While most modern chess masters, justifiably, have nothing to do with the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+), years ago International Master Gary Lane had a bemused affection for the offbeat opening, and discussed it in his "Opening Lanes" column at ChessCafe.com, and in his book The Greatest Ever Chess Tricks and Traps (Everyman Chess, 2008).

Lane's book is still available, but his two "Opening Lanes" columns - "A Game of Shadows" and "Trash or Treasure?" with Jerome Gambit content are no longer freely accessible in they way they used to be (i.e. direct link via ChessCafe.com), which means that the links supplied previously by this blog (e.g. in "International Master Gary Lane" and "Opening Lanes") no longer work.

ChessCafe is currently maintained by ChessEdu.org, which requires a $25 (or more) "tax deductible donation" in order to access their "thousands of PDFs and hundreds of Ebooks" (including "Opening Lanes") available to members.

However, through the wizardry of the archiving Wayback Machine website, you can still feast (gratis) upon IM Lane's Jerome Gambit creativity: "A Game of Shadows" and "Trash or Treasure?". (These links have also been updated in the Wikipedia article on "Giuoco Piano, Jerome Gambit".)

Jerome Gambit: More Fun On Top Of That

Winning with the Jerome Gambit is fun.

Checkmating your opponent with the Jerome Gambit is even more fun.

Checkmating your opponent with the Jerome Gambit in a 1 0 bullet game is even more fun, on top of that.

Let angelcamina, at lichess.org, show you. 

angelcamina - khoshghadam
1 0 bullet, lichess.org, 2020

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ 

4...Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Ke6

7.f4 g6

A knee-jerk reaction - Kick that Queen! - that surrenders Black's advantage. The defender spent 3 seconds on this move, which is a bit of a luxury in a bullet game, and which illustrates the dangers of facing the Jerome Gambit at high speed: it's a whole lot easier to figure out a defense when you have time enough to think about it.

8.Qxe5+ Kf7 9.Qxc5 

Recently, we saw Bill Wall capture the Rook at h8, instead.

9...d6 10.Qe3 Nf6 11.O-O Re8 12.d3 Bg4 

I am not sure what this move is about. Black could have hit the center with 12...d5, or protected a part of it with 12...c6, instead.

13.h3 Bd7 14.Nc3 Bc6 15.Qg3 d5

Okay, but White's attack rolls on.

16.e5 Nh5 17.Qf3 d4 

Black attacks a Knight while uncovering an attack on the Queen. However, White's natural response is sufficient.

18.Ne4 Ng7

Anticipating action at f5, but he is already too late.

19.g4 Ne6 20.f5 

20...Bxe4 21.dxe4 

If you saw that 21.fxg6+ right away led to an even faster checkmate, good for you.

21...Ng5 22.fxg6+ Kxg6 23.Qf5+ Kg7 24.Bxg5 Qc8 25.Qf7+ Kh8 26.Bf6 checkmate

A fun conclusion.

Modern Guide to Gambits

Wow!

Nikolai Kalinichenko, a correspondence grandmaster, has written The Club Player's Modern Guide To Gambits: Fighting Chess from the Get-go (Russell Enterprises, 2019).

I was excited, and, since his focus was on "club players", and he was looking at "fighting chess from the get-go" I could not wait to see what he had written on the Jerome Gambit.

Checking out the table of contents, I was pleased to see that his list of gambits included some of the offbeat gambits, such as the Cochrane Gambit, the Latvian Gambit, the Sicilian Wing Gambit, the Icelandic Gambit, the von Hennig-Schara Gambit, the Englund Gambit, and even the Blackmar Diemer Gambit.

Alas, no Jerome Gambit.

Even if it had been a chapter on "How to Defeat the Jerome Gambit", it would have been interesting and welcome. (I guess you will have to settle for the blog posts "An International Master Refutes the Jerome Gambit" and "A GM Faces the Jerome Gambit [Part 1 and 2]").

Oh, well, maybe next time.

More Jerome Gambit Fun

I have followed the games of different players online, for years. One is chessmanjeff, who enjoys the Jerome Gambit, and has battled in many of its variations.

I thought I'd share a recent game of his, as it touches on the Jerome Gambit Declined - a relatively rare variation, true, but one that has nagged me over the years, for some odd reason (see "Jerome Gambit Declined: Grumping,Yet", check out the links, check out the links on the linked pages...)

The pieces in the following game fly over the board in odd ways, like a group of acrobats who have a whole lot of energy to burn.

chessmanjeff - fabttt
5 0 blitz, FICS, 2019


1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Bc5 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.Bxf7+ Ke7 

The Jerome Gambit Declined. Seen more often is 4...Kf8, which does not block the action of Black's Queen.

5.d4

Every computer suggests that White retreat the Queen with 5.Bd5, 5.Bc4, or 5.Bb3, but chessmanjeff wants to complicate things and open lines - which makes for a livelier 5-minute game.

5...Nxd4 6.Nxe5 Nf6 7.c3 Nb5

Certainly returning to c6 was stronger, but Komodo 10 follows that suggestion up with some spirited play, leading to a draw by repetition: 7...Nc6 8.f4 d6 9.Nxc6+ bxc6 10.Bh5 Nxe4 11.Qe2 Kf8 12.Bf3 Nf2 13.b4 Bb6 14.Rf1 Kf7 15.Bxc6 Bg4 16.Qc4+ Be6 17.Qb5 a6 18.Qe2 Bg4 19.Qc4+ Be6 20.Qe2 etc. Computers, fairly often, see White as willing to grab any chance it can get for a draw in the Jerome Gambit.

8.Bb3 d6 9.Nf7 Qe8 10.Nxh8 Nxe4 11.O-O Qxh8 

White's Bishop and Knight have had fun together. Soon it will be Black's Bishop's and Knight's turn.

12.Re1 Bf5 13.Qd5 Bxf2+ 14.Kh1 Bxe1 15.Qxf5 Nf2+ 

16.Kg1 Rf8

The Rook wants to join in the fun (are all of Black's pieces developed?) but it overlooks impending danger.

17.Bg5+ Ke8 18.Qe6 checkmate

Oh.

Jerome Gambit Fun

I have been playing through new and unexamined games in the updated The Database. There are many entertaining and educational games - and one player (among many) who caught my eye was DANNYALBERTO, at FICS. He shows up mostly with Blackburne Shilling Jerome Gambits (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nd4 4.Bxf7+) with the occasional Italian Four Knights Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Nc3 Bc5 5.Bxf7+) thrown in, from 2015 to the present. (He scores a very decent 64%.)

Check out the following end-of-the-game positions, just a few among many. The kind of fun that they represent is what draws many club players to the Jerome Gambit and various Jerome-ish lines.

DANNYALBERTO - Tseatsy, blitz, FICS, 2016

DANNYALBERTO - boggus, blitz, FICS 2016

DANNYALBERTO - NightEagle, blitz, FICS, 2017

DANNYALBERTO - fluters, blitz, FICS, 2019

Jerome Gambit: New Year's Resolution

Looking at some of the Jerome Gambit games from 2019 that I have recently added to The Database, I noticed that 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ scored a surprising 57%, up from 52% the previous year.

I suspect that - despite my claims of "representativeness" - The Database may have been slightly skewed by all of the wins last year, scored by angelcamina and Bill Wall. Oh, well.☺

Nonetheless, I still noted over a dozen games starting 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Ng5?!

It turns out that The Database has 564 such games.

Some of you are probably scratching your heads, wondering 

What is that move all about?  Was it a fast time control, and White got ahead of himself? What was his plan?

A closer examination would reveal that only about 3/4 of the time did Black play the indicated (and crushing) 5...Qxg5, which, admittely  allows White to reveal his intentions with 6.d4 - a simultaneous attack on the Black Bishop at c5 and the Queen at g5.

There's not much to White's "attack" after 6...Qxg2, though - in 147 games, White scored only 11%

I would like to argue that this line is too risky, even for a Jerome Gambit player - which is saying a lot.

Maybe a good New Year's resolution would be to stay away from 5.Ng5?!