The marvelous Hamppe-Allgaier Gambit in the Vienna Game

#ViennaGame #HamppeAllgaierGambit 

Yesterday, I perused a book on the Vienna Game (“Vienna Game”, by Gary Lane) that I had purchased some time ago, but hadn’t gotten around to reading. In the introduction, it described the origins of the Vienna Game, crediting it to Carl Hamppe from the 1800s, a Swiss government official in Vienna who spent his spare time in chess cafes! In the introduction, it noted that “Hamppe’s Game”, what we now know as the Vienna Game opening, was back then seen as a good way of playing a delayed King’s Gambit, naming the “Hamppe-Allgaier Gambit” as an example.

I was curious… what is this gambit? And from a historical perspective, we now know who was Hamppe, but who was Allgaier? Johann Baptist Allgaier was a German-Austrian chess master from an earlier period, the late 1700s and a very interesting figure! It seems that he was the chess master operating the “Mechanical Turk” – the chess playing automaton/robot hoax – in the game against Napoleon in 1809!

This gambit becomes available after playing the Vienna Gambit from the Max Lange Defense of the Vienna Game, where the opponent accepts the gambit, and following white’s natural Nf3, black seeks to keep their pawn on f4 with g5. The is basically the same line as in the King’s Gambit Accepted, with the exception that both players have developed their queen’s knights.

As can be seen in the video, this gambit is potentially unsound for white, but for black to keep their advantage, they need to play accurately, and potentially, some unnatural looking moves. I had a look at community games on the Lichess database, and this gambit is almost never seen, so it’s unlikely that anyone in the beginner-intermediate level will know any theory. My view? It’s well worth trying if you get the opportunity!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/computer/11997269