This game puzzle comes from GM Ian Rogers’ excellent book ‘Oops! I resigned one more time!’. It features a game from the 1985 Australian Open in Ballarat, between David Hacche and Eddy Levi.
Game Puzzle from 1985 Australian Open
The ‘Usurper’ – The Immortal Sacrifice Game
Kevin Perrin recently found this game, featured in David Howell’s The Times chess column, in his archives and played through it because he recognised the name ‘Grigory Serper’ as a player at the World Junior championship held in Adelaide in 1988 for which he was the chief arbiter. That event included household names such as Gelfand, Ivanchuk, Akopian, Adams, Polgar and many other future stars, but it was won by Joel Lautier from France. It was one of his most rewarding chess experiences.
Play through Serper, the usurper‘s game against Ioannis Nikolaidis to experience “the story of the hecatomb, the legendary Greek sacrifice of 100 oxen”, cited as an inspiration for Serper’s game. Swedish GM Tiger Hillarp in his recent book, “Tiger’s Chaos Theory” 2024, gives this game to show that intuition can play a vital part in chess; Serper sacrifices his entire army to win the game.
West snatches chess title
If you look closely , several familiar onlookers have been labelled on the Courier photo; do you recognise any of the others?
Here is the game between Stephen Solomon and Eddy Levi, pictured above.
Australian Open 84 / 85, Round 6 results
You can see that Guy West is leading by half a point after Round 6. S Neerava, M Fuller, Chris Despasquale and C Laird follow on 5 points. you can see half of David Hacche on 4 points, on the left.
Here is a blistering Round 3 game between West and Hacche where White sacs a knight then offers a queen, with his bishop rook knight and pawn sufficient to complete the job, if the queen sac was taken.