Check this out - http://james-plasketts-coincidence-diary.blogspot.com/2007/12/234-answering-question-of-when-earliest.html

rigamagician - I'm impressed by the speed you found these. To be more specific, I'm looking for early games where ...Rxc3 was played as a *positional* sacrifice in the Yugoslav Variation of the Dragon defense. The two examples you gave are *tactical* sacrifices to eliminate the Knight's protecting some other square. Is the Sokolsky - Veresov game one of the earliest examples of the Yugoslav Variation?

quny - Loading rigamagician's PGN into a game viewer makes it easy to play through the game.

Thanks to both for the fast response. - Mark

see

Here are a couple of earlier examples.

[Event "Bad Oeynhausen m"]
[Site "Bad Oeynhausen"]
[Date "1922.08.??"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Gerbec, Theodor"]
[Black "Colle, Edgar"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B77"]
[EventDate "1922.08.??"]
[EventType "match"]
[EventRounds "4"]
[EventCountry "GER"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 d6 6. Bc4 Bd7 7. f3 g6 8. Be3
Bg7 9. Qd2 O-O 10. g4 Rc8 11. Bb3 Qa5 12. h4 Ne5 13. Kf2 Nexg4+ 14. fxg4 Rxc3
15. Bd5 Nxg4+ 0-1

[Event "URS-ch sf"]
[Site "Leningrad"]
[Date "1938.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Sokolsky, Alexey"]
[Black "Veresov, Gavriil N"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B76"]
[EventDate "1938.??.??"]
[EventType "tourn"]
[EventRounds "17"]
[EventCountry "URS"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 6. f3 Bg7 7. Be3 Nc6 8. Qd2
O-O 9. O-O-O Bd7 10. g4 Rc8 11. h4 h5 12. gxh5 Nxh5 13. Rg1 Qa5 14. Rg5 Qd8 15.
Be2 Kh7 16. Rdg1 Nxd4 17. Bxd4 Bxd4 18. Qxd4 Nf4 19. h5 Rxc3 20. Qd2 Nxe2+ 21.
Qxe2 Rc5 22. hxg6+ Kg7 23. Rxc5 dxc5 24. gxf7+ Kxf7 25. Qh2 Ke6 26. Rg5 Rxf3
27. Qe5+ Kf7 28. Rg7+ Kf8 29. Rg1 Rf6 30. Qh5 Qc8 31. e5 Rf2 32. Qh6+ 1-0