Hyacinthe Henri Boncourt facts for kids

Hyacinthe Henri Boncourt (1765? – March 23, 1840) was a French chess player. He was one of the leading chess players in France in the years between 1820 and 1840.

Biography

Although he was one of the leading players of his time, not much is known about his life. The date of his birth can only be estimated. Rod Edwards gives 1765 as a reasonable birth date based on Walker's assertion that in 1839 Boncourt was about seventy years old.

Although a contemporary of Philidor, Boncourt never played with the French master, who had since emigrated to England, but was initiated to chess by some of Philidor's students and in particular Carlier, Bernard and Leger who frequented the Café de la Régence. Here, he probably met Legall de Kermeur, Philidor's teacher, who played assiduously at the Café de la Régence almost until the year of his death in 1794. He traveled around Europe, but he never visited London.

He was a civil servant, and chess was mostly a hobby for him. He played until a late age and, actually, he obtained his best results after he was sixty years old, when, taking advantage of being retired he could devote full-time to chess. G.

In 1818, for a brief period, he was the operator of the Turk. At that time, he was not yet one of the best players in France. Furthermore, in the days when he was hidden inside the Automaton, he caught the flu and his performance was rather poor. While he was hiding inside the Turk, due to the flu, he was seized by coughing and the sound was perceived by the spectators, creating a certain embarrassment to Mälzel (the Turk owner). For this reason, Mälzel, subsequently, added some noisy gears to the Turk, which had no other purpose but to cover any noise that could come from the operator.

Trivia

As already mentioned the reputation of Boncourt consolidates after retirement when he could go more assiduously to the Café de la Regence.

Chess career

In the period 1834-1836 is part of the Committee of the Paris Chess Club, who played the famous match by correspondence with the Westminster Chess Club. The others were Alexandre, St. Amant and Chamouillet, while the British lined up McDonnell, Lewis and Walker and others.

In 1835, he drew a match in Paris with Szén. In 1839 he defeated Walker in a short match (+2-1). In 1840, he first defeated (19-16) St. Amant and then drew a match with Kieseritzky.

In the period between 1830 and 1840, Boncourt was one of the strongest players in Europe. The magazine The Philidoran directed by G. Walker, in 1838 published a sort of ranking of the best players of the period divided by nationality; Boncourt is second in France behind De la Bourdonnais and of the same strength of St. Amant. The web-site Edo Historical Chess Ratings places him third in the world between 1839 and 1840 after Deschapelles and de la Bourdonnais.

Style of play

G. He liked to play chess, which he considered essentially a hobby, but did not like studying theory; this fact was well known in Parisian circles. For this reason, as the above Walker's quotation indicates, he did not excel in the most theoretical parts of the game: the opening and the endgame.

As an example of Boncourt's play the following game played with Kieseritzky is reported. Punctuation and the notes between square parenthesis come from analysis carried out with the chess engine FireBird 1.2, which indicates that Black's attack after Kieseritzky's mistake on move 21 is almost flawless.