[Gothmog]

What an interesting change of scene that is. I'm wondering if Gollum really could have given the ring away? He intended to give his precious to Bilbo, but Bilbo intended to leave the Ring to Frodo at his departure. Still, Bilbo found it hard seperate from it. Shouldn't Gollum, who had the ring for many hundreds of years, had an even harder struggle with himself?

The ancient rules of the Riddle game is mentioned in TH. Would something like that be able to override the ring's power and make Gollum give away his ring?

I doubt Gollum would be able to give away the Ring once it lay in his hand. In this old version, he doesn't have a choice. But if this version were to be published as the right one, Gollum's lack of reaction of the missing ring wouldn't agree very well with LotR.

But in some way, the loss of the ring as mentioned here seems like the best thing that could happen to the poor creature. Maybe, if the story was written in this way, Smeagol could die in peace.