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.
