Johann Baptist Allgaier
Johann Baptist Allgaier (June 19, 1763, Schussenried – January 3, 1823, Vienna) was a German-Austrian chess master and theoretician.
[2] Subsequently, it was discovered that some information was also present in the memories of Karl Heinrich von Ritters Lang written in 1842, but not known to the chess historians of the time.
[3] Johann Baptist Allgaier was born in 1763 in the Duchy of Württemberg; his mother tongue was the Swabian dialect.
His father, Georg Allgaier, was employed at a monastery as a Hofmeister, the person, who, in those days, was in charge of the education of the children of the rich and noble families.
Following a trip to Poland, however, he learned chess from a Polish Jew and the game became his main interest at the expense of the study of theology.
In order to make some additional money, he played chess in the Cafés of Vienna, and in particular to the Zur Goldenen Krone, the meeting place of many strong players in the capital, including Anton Witthalm and the Count Johann Somssich.
Witthalm reported that Allgaier's style was brilliant and mainly focused on attacking, while Somssich, by contrast, was more cautious and defensive.
In fact, Allgaier throughout most of his life had to deal with a constant shortage of money as it emerges from the memoirs of Karl Heinrich von Ritters Lang.
The fact that he died in a public institution, although he was married, gives, according to Anton Baron Reisner, a clear proof of Allgaier's shortage of money.
He was influenced both by the ideas of Philidor and the Modenese School (del Rio, Lolli and Ponziani) between which he tried some sort of compromise.
[13] Allgaier had a particular preference for the kingside pawn majority, which he believed to be, ceteris paribus, a decisive advantage since it can advance, as Philidor had taught in his treatise,[14] against the enemy castling (e.g. e2–e4–e5, f2–f4, g2–g4, f4–f5 etc.).
The French master believed that this move was wrong, in principle, because it prevents the f2-pawn from advancing and supporting, if needed, the e5-pawn.
At this point, having reached a configuration where White had a kingside majority, Philidor could advance the pawn e-, f-, and possibly g-pawn against the enemy castling.
The Modenese School, in contrast, preferred to develop the pieces quickly, change a couple of pawns in the center and concentrate all its forces against a specific target (usually the opponent's king).
Allgaier is half-way between the two Schools, he agrees with Philidor on the force of the kingside majority, but at the same time he argues that his experience as a player and as a student of chess led him to believe that the pieces' play all'italiana was a good alternative.
After 5... h6, in fact, White must sacrifice the knight with 6.Nxf7, leading to a very tactical game (the author's analysis on this opening line is contained in the fourth edition of the Neue Anweisung of 1819).
In the sixth and seventh edition of the Neue Anweisung, Santo Vito added an appendix containing four games played by the strongest players in Vienna.
[18] These games are rare and cannot be found in the common chess databases like ChessBase, 365chess, chessbites or chesslab and, consequently, are here reported.
In the original text, there were no comments to the games; punctuation and the notes between square parenthesis come from analysis carried out with the chess engine FireBird 1.2.
