Almost all preliminary results of the 3rd FIDE World Cup in Composing for 2013 are ready! The PDFs of the awards can be found under the Announcement, on the 3rd FIDE World Cup in Composing 2013 page of WFCC website. Congratulations to the winners and all participants!
Today I’m happy to see the Award of Fairy Section! And using a chance, I congratulate fairy composers, winners and participants, and especially the Cup Winner – PROF. S. K. BALASUBRAMANIAN !!!
Congrats and best wishes to the Professor..!
One more to his list of recent successes..
Congrats Bala ! Two top prizes in succession is great. Keep it up!
Thanks to your great efforts, we did so well in the 9 th WCCT also !
So the Cup go to India this year. Congratulations! As a remark, not hs#/= at all…
Yes… Surprising that no HS#/= in the award. And there are some good direct mates (slowly disappearing genre? !).
In my opinion, both Gockel’s and Brabec’s twomovers were underrated, while a few helpmates in the award were overrated.
I think there are less direct mates seen today than helpproblems for two reasons. One of them is that it is much more difficult to make decent direct play problem than helpproblem. So some composers simply take the easy way.
Which are the fairy elements in the second honourable mention?
I hope, my dear friend Dupont, that you read regularly the Albums of FIDE. For example, the Album 1998-2000 contains 3 problems with a stipulation h=n without fairy-pieces or conditions: G3, G4, G5. In the Album 2001-2003 such problems are G2, G3, G4, G5.
According to the practice of our Federation, the stipulation H=n (without fairy pieces and conditions) is a fairy stipulation. Therefore, Your question should be addressed to our WFCC. But I think that it is a right practice because exist also the analogical stipulations (without fairy elements) s=n r=n etc.
I don’t remember why, I had in mind that a fairy problem should use some alteration of orthodox chess rules… So thanks, dear Petko, for having opened my eyes on this point!
Stalemate is an alteration of orthodox chess rules (“The objective of each player is to place the opponent’s king ‘under attack’ in such a way that the opponent has no legal move.”).
There is no alteration of chess rules. Stalemate is a frequently occurring event in orthodox chess. What is different is to aim for stalemating rather than mating the opponent. Actually self-stalemate is frequently aimed by players in a losing position.
Anyway these arguments are beside the point. Our federation is considering these types as Fairy. So these will remain in the Fairy section of the Album and tourneys.
Weren’t the h# and s# considered as fairies once upon a time?
If a selfstalemate is not an “orthodox” aim in a chess game, how a selfmate can be more “orthodox” or “not fairy”?
One would expect that s= would become non-fairy before s#.
Yes Nikola, one can read in the « guide des échecs », page 1220 : « en 1921, seize compositeurs du cercle de Budapest envoyèrent à T.R. Dawson (pour sa colonne d’échecs féeriques dans « Chess Amateur ») une collection de soixante-dix mats aidés ».
There is some underlying logic I can’t understand concerning the actual classification: If stalemate-aim is considered fairy as the orthodox way to play chess is to checkmate the opponent side, why helped-stipulation is not also considered fairy (like in 1921) as the orthodox way to play chess is to fight against the opponent side?