Award JF-2022/I (V.Crisan)

AWARD of Julia’s Fairies 2022-I
Informal Tournament (1.1.2022-30.6.2022)
Judge: Vlaicu Crişan

The overall quality of the tournament is rather high, as in the first draft of the award I retained more than half of the competing entries. Then I decided to change my approach and proceed in a different way by establishing the rank level for each composition:

  • Prize: Must be in the FIDE Album
  • Honorable Mention: Should be in the FIDE Album
  • Commendation: Could be in the FIDE Album

The prize winners stuck in my memory long time after viewing all the problems. All are simply outstanding pieces of work – clearly the best in their categories – and produce sheer enjoyment.


FINAL Award JF-2019/II by Petko Petkov

On the occasion of the awarding of the Julias Fairies 2019-II, judge Petko A. Petkov announces the following: “In II. TANAGRA SECTION, by the request of the author, Daniel Papack, the 2nd Prize problem is eliminated from the competition. Problem by Daniel Novomeski( -/Ke3, h#4.5 ) gets the 2nd Prize, and problem by Geoff Foster (Kg2/Ka4, h#2.5) gets the 3rd Prize. Since there are no other changes, the Award with the specified correction should be considered final.”

Preliminary Award JF-2019-II is replaced with the FINAL Award JF-2019-II on the Tournaments page.


Attention! The recent issue of ANDA FAIRY PLANET No.5 (June 2023) by Petko Petkov is added to the Articles page.


Award JF-2020/II by Hans Gruber

With a gratitude to the judge, Hans Gruber, and with congratulations to the winners of JF’s informal tournament of the 2nd half of 2020!

“I leaned on Hans Peter Rehm’s advice that it is the main task of a judge to select those problems which she or he considers to be worth to be studied once more by the general audience and to argue why those problems are considered excellent or beautiful (or both). This means that awards should focus, like the FIDE-Album, on the positive selection, and they should single out compositions, not composers. However, my sincere thanks to the composers who gave me the pleasure that I could study the following problems.” (Hans Gruber, from the Award)


JF10JT: the Award by Kjell Widlert

PDF, 32p

With a gratitude to the judge, Kjell Widlert, and to all participants of Julia’s Fairies jubilee tournament

(most of photos from the ceremony by Maksims Pučinskis)


I’ll bring the printed booklets “Award JF10JT” to WCSC 2022! The animated version of the award will be coming soon….


Award JF 2021/II (Shankar Ram)

Do you believe in Santa? You have to, as a real miracle has happened on this New Year’s night! 

And here is him, with a surprising gift to all of you – Shankar Ram with the Award JF-2021/II (July-December 2021!)

Award JF-2021/II (fully prepared by Shankar Ram)

What can I say? I’m amazed! I feel I’ve got so wonderful gifts for this New year: two JF’s awards of 2021 (Ofer Comay and Shankar Ram) and also the acceptance to judge the next fairy tournament – JF-2022/I – from Vlaicu Crișan!
This is something what gives me energy and wish to do this work, to smile and to be glad and proud about so wonderful members of our society! Let’s spend the New year 2022 as we have started it!


Award JF 2021/I (Ofer Comay)

Dear Friends, Ofer Comay was hurrying to make it for you this year, and I was hurrying to prepare it for the publication today… as a New year’s gift to all of you!

With sincere congratulations and with the best New Year’s wishes – the Award JF 2021/I

Award JF-2021/I

Please, don’t worry about possible mistakes in diagrams/solutions, I’ll correct everything later, will go through the whole document again tomorrow, but now I have no more time – some more champagne and the gifts are waiting! 🙂

Happy New year to all of you! Thank you for your best compositions! Stay creative and enjoy what you do!


Correction to Award JF-Retros-PG-2019-2020

The Award JF-Retros-PG-2019-2020 is updated with the Annex 2 (on the last page) by the request of the judge, Vlaicu Crișan:

“In the initial award I decided not to award a prize to the problem 1223.2 from the “Other Retro Section”, due to the existence of a predecessor. However, the aforementioned problem is actually the correction of the original problem 1223 published in 4th June 2017, published two years before the predecessor.

The correction 1223.2 was published in 24th June 2019, two years after the publication of the original setting. In accordance with the first paragraph of the article 23 from the Codex, if a published chess composition is found to be unsound, it loses its priority date unless a correction is published within three years after the publication of the unsoundness. That also means 1223.2 can’t be penalized for this reason and my decision to downgrade it to the 1st Honourable Mention must be reconsidered.

To be fair, based on the assessment criteria used in the award, this problem must actually be placed on the top of the section. However, lowering the initial place of the higher ranked problems after the award is published can be perceived as an injustice.

Therefore, my decisions are the following => see/hide more…


Award JF 2017/I

Let’s go back in time,  into JF’s tournament 2017/I. Thanks to the problems dedicated to it, I was glad to recall JF’s 5 years jubilee. Time runs fast, and the next year it will be already 10! 

With a gratitude to Tadashi Wakashima, I’m very glad to present you the best JF’s problems from 5 years ago:

Click to see the Award JF-2017/I (PDF, 10 pages)

Congratulations to the winners! Thanks a lot to all participants, visitors and commentators!


You can see all tournaments/awards in the section JF Tournaments from the top menu. I’m sorry there’re still no news about the results of JF-2013-II from Diyan Kostadinov. Otherwise, from 2012 up to the middle of 2019, all results are presented! I’ll be looking for the judges of current competitions, JF-R2021-22 & JF-2021-II – sorry for being late with this! Next weekend, 14th August, I’ll continue to publish original problems. Please, take your time for final corrections before sending them. 13th of August would be the best day to start sending your best problems ! 🙂