Chris writes in his column: “At the recent Begonia Open, Anthony Hain met a Heffalump in former Australian champion Stephen Solomon. As in the previous example (Robson vs Caruana, American Cup), the operation was a success but the patient died. Hain deserves credit for how he went about it.” Here is the game annotated by Chris – (see Diagram below labelled: “In the diagrammed position it is White to play his 15th move in today’s second 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.
Kevin Casey comments on ChessChat:
The first Australian Open I ever played was in 1984/85, in Ballarat, VIC when I was in my late 20s. It was my introduction to serious chess in Australia. It was won by Guy West, who played very convincingly throughout and had a nice miniature (with queen sac) against Hacche. American GM Pal Benko was also there.
I remember starting surprisingly well, with wins in the first half of the tourney against IM Alex Wohl (a cheap tactical swindle/exchange sac saved my very dubious position), IM Greg Hjorth (the recent Commwealth champion, who opened with 1.Nc3), and Bruce Holliday, who was Queensland champion at the time, I believe). I then scored a convincing draw against GM Benko, playing the Veresov opening (he was cranky with the result, and later, he was even less happy when he lost to Holliday. He later blamed jet lag for his poor overall showing).
So after the first 6 rounds, I was right up there with the leaders. Alas, my good fortune and rampant tactical bamboozelments weren’t to last, as I was soon demolished by a then 19-year-old Stephen Solomon, an in-form Craig Laird and an always-dangerous Alan Goldsmith from South Australia – one of my favourite Aussie players and a tremendously dynamic attacker.
Little did I know that Solo would quickly develop into the most formidable player in Queensland chess history, Craig Laird would trade serious chess for prawn trawlers in the Gulf, and it would be 1999 before I played another Australia Open, in QLD. Good times….
