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.
West snatches chess title
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.
Getting ready for the Australian Open 84/85
Although it is difficult to see their faces in this Courier article, the standard bearers were Kevin Perrin, Rod Jacobs, Andy Miitel, and Gordon Males, in their youth! Kevin and Rod are still active in the Ballarat Chess Club in 2025.
Shane Hill
Shane Hill was the youngest competitor in the event, having just finished fourth in the World Under 14 Chess Championships in Argentina. This article was written after Round 4 was completed.
Australian Open 1984 – Canberra Times
From the Canberra Times 23 Jan 1985 by George Stern
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….
Pairing Cards
Back in the day, before computers and printers were readily accessible to all, the Director of Play in any sizeable chess tournament faced the intense challenge of producing and keeping records for each participant on their own specific pairing card. The overall results were displayed on a blackboard, updated after every round. The individual results could be cross-checked by referring to the two player cards in question.
Top seed, GM Ian Rogers, drew with fourth seed, IM Stephen Solomon, in Round 4 and accumulated 6.5 points to reach an equal first position after Round 7.
So, the Director of Play’s job was not an easy task: The results in the 1984 Begonia had to be filled in for each of seven rounds, player card by player card (92 of them that year), before racing to the blackboard to write up the completed round’s results, manually working out the next round’s pairings and writing them up as well! It must have been a nightmare!
The added task for the sole DOP in 1984 (for comparison there were 6 arbiters at the 2025 Begonia Open!) was to supervise the numerous clocks and multiple time controls. The modern DGT clocks and new time controls make for an arbiter’s dream as no intervention is required at all. There were only the good old wind up BHB analogue clocks (like the Teters Tournament clock shown above), which had to be reset after each time control. The first control was always 40 moves in 90 minutes then generally followed by 20 moves in 20 minutes and then 10 minutes to finish the game. Some years then went to adjudication and that was fortunately a short-lived nightmare. Kevin Perrin reminisced: “I can recall running between the boards in the time scrambles to see which clocks were about to fall before they had to be reset. I also desperately tried to record the moves for the top few games in the case there was a dispute. Some players stored up there moves and tried to blitz their opponents as no recording was required in the final 5 minutes. There were no second arbiters so I did occasionally have to ask for some help on the distant lower boards. Oh, those were the days!”
1984 Tournament Book by Mark Bruere
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Courier sponsors the Australian Open Ballarat 1984
Australian Open in Ballarat, 1984/85
Over the New Year of 1984 to 1985 the Ballarat Chess Club successfully hosted the 16-day Australian Open Chess Tournament. For a small country club that was quite an achievement and we have gathered some of the newspaper articles, games, photos and commentary from that time to commemorate the event.
In this photo The Courier manager Doug Cowies, the tournament’s main sponsor, shakes hands with Rod Jacobs, the then Treasurer, as Secretary Kevin Perrin looks on with fellow club official Frank Anderson.
The total prize fund of $5000 was a lot of money back in the day!
A young Kevin Perrin observes play between Stephen Soloman and Eddy Levi. Steven Solomon won the Begonia Open earlier in that year, and 6 more times to the date of writing in 2024.
Guy West went on to win the tournament with a score of 10.5 out of 13 points.
