Award JF-2020/II by Hans Gruber

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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)

RIFACE 2022 : composing tournaments

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The 43th RIFACE (International Meeting in France for Chess Problems Lovers) will take place in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, 4th-6th June, 2022.

Themes of composing tournaments:

Thème aidés.pdf | Thème féerique.pdf | Thème rétro.pdf

Address to send the entries : RIFACE.2022@gmail.com for Helpmates and Fairies;
retro.riface2022@gmail.com for retro problems. Time limit to send the entries : Sunday 5th June at 15:00 (French time)

JF10JT: the Award by Kjell Widlert

Awards, JF 6 Comments
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….

Add-a-Year 65 JT (ECSC 2022)

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Add-a-Year 65 JT

A quick composing tournament in the frames of ECSC 2022
dedicated to Marjan Kovačević’s 65th jubilee

Theme: Construct a position where adding one piece creates a #2 with unique key-move.
There must be at least one genuine „Add-a-piece try“, failing because of a single cook (second key-move).

The unusual title Add-a-Year 65 JT, was inspired by the words from birthday greetings I got from Michel today. I wanted this title to preserve the joyful mood I had with reactions to Add-a-Piece competition at the time of my 65th birthday. (Marjan Kovačević, 08.04.2022)

Judge: Marjan Kovačević | Director: Borislav Gadjanski | Deadline: 29th April (midnight ECT).
Send problems (with FEN, solution and tries) to borislav.gadjanski@gmail.com

Munich Fairy Chess Tourney 2022 – С130922

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Munich Fairy Chess Tourney 2022

The mpk-Blaetter announces the Munich Fairy Tourney 2022 with the theme Influencer chess. Problems of any stipulation are required (direct-, self-, reflex-, help-, helpself-) with any target (-mate, -stalemate, -arrival square, -castling, …) or proof games, all alternating or in series, with any move number on a 8×8 board.

See the definition and examples in PDF Announcement (German & English).

The theme is free. | Further fairy pieces or fairy conditions are not accepted.
Judge: Manfred Rittirsch | Tournament director: Rolf Kohring | Closing date: September 30th, 2022
Submissions should be sent to mpk-blaetter@gmx.de (preferred) or Rolf Kohring, Bolkamer Straße 5a, D-83104 Tuntenhausen, Germany.

JF10JT: a week to the deadline

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a week to the deadline… 10.02.22

Dear friends, I know about some of you, and I hope if I don’t know 🙂 that you do compose for JF’s jubilee tournament.

Update final 10.02.22: Accepted 59 entries by the section: A=10, B=32, C=17.

Thanks a lot to all of you who take part! I’ve enjoyed your compositions very much and now I’m glad to pass it to the judge, Kjell Widlert. The tournament is anonymous.

Results and prize giving: May 15th 2022 in Riga, at the closing ceremony of the 15th ECSC and published the same day on JF, of course.

Unpin in JF10JT: important clarification

Tournamens, JF 29 Comments

Unpin in JF10JT:
important clarification

We’re grateful to all of you for your comments and questions regarding pin/unpin definition for this tournament!

After some thoughts and discussions we decided to allow almost any interpretation of the given definition of a fairy unpin. We are not trying to produce the final definitions of pin and unpin here, we are running a tourney! Still, we would not like to call a normal un-paralysing move an unpin (in a problem using paralyzing pieces, or Madrasi, etc), and even less an ordinary line-opening… The same time we would allow the fairy concepts of self-unpin.

So, please see an update to previously given definition of unpin for this tournament:

Theme: Unpin of any kind. The unpinned piece may be white, black or neutral, and unpinning may be done by any side, in any way: interposition, withdrawal, K move, etc. For this tourney, we define a pin to be a situation where a random move by one piece would cause its own K to be in check from one or more enemy pieces = the pinner(s). An unpin is any move that eliminates this situation, including self-unpin (the pinned piece makes a move that eliminates the pin) but excluding captures of the pinned piece that remove it from the board. 

This means that we now allow self-unpins where the pinned piece captures the pinner, and also allow captures of the pinned piece as long as it is reborn somewhere else on the board (so it is now unpinned).

The tourney may provide material for a future discussion about how best to define pin and unpin in the fairy field.

To give you a better idea here are three examples provided by Ricardo Vieira:

1.Bf6 Sxf6[Bf8] – thematic!
First, 1.Bf6 move may be treated as allowing Sg8 to move.
Second, 1…Sxf6[Bf8] move may be treated as self-unpin.

After Sa1 fxe5 is legal
After Sc1 fxg5 is legal
not thematic because random move by Pf6 won’t be self-check. 

1.Bxd3[Bf1] not thematic, as opposed to the definition (doesn’t eliminate the situation of pin)

Welcome to participate! – Julia Vysotska (tournament director) & Kjell Widlert (judge)

Deadline: February 10th 2022
Please, send computer tested problems only (indicate the program used for testing), to julia@juliasfairies.com

Results and prize giving: May 15th 2022 in Riga, at the closing ceremony of the 15th ECSC.

Prize fund €450 : Three prizes in each section, each prize €50.

See Examples in the updated PDF announcement JF10JT (the version includes just published clarifications)

Jubilee Theme Tourney by Hungarian Chess Composers website

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The Hungarian Chess Composers website on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the introduction of the site, announces a Jubilee Theme Tourney in Orthodox and Fairy sections.

Theme: Helpmate in 3 or more moves, which including battery creation with three or more solutions.
I.) In solutions a) and b), A and B form two-way batteries, then give battery mates. The front piece cannot attack the king in the mate position.
II.) In solution c), after the front piece (A) of the battery that has been created is captured, the long-range piece (B) of the battery gives mate.

Judges: I. Orthodox section: Ladislav Packa |  II. Fairy section: Vlaicu CRISAN 
Fairy pieces and fairy conditions are allowed.

Please, send computer tested problems only (indicate the program used for testing), to tournament director János Mikitovics, j.mikitovics@gmail.com, till September 30, 2022.
Number of entries per composer: no limit | Joint problems: no limit | The prize money pool is: € 1,000.
The Premilinary and Final Award will be published on the Hungarian Chess Composers website.

 

Armin Geister 70 JT

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Armin Geister 70 JT

In honor of Armin Geister’s 70th birthday the Czech magazine Sachova Skladba (No. 152, 10/2021) announces a tourney for orthodox twinnings:
a) helpmate [h#]
b) helpstalemate [h=].
Entries to be sent to Jiri Jelinek by e-mail: jjelinek@atlas.cz
C 19.7.2022, Judge: Armin Geister, book prizes.

← Example problem:
a) 1.Qg3 Rf7 2.Ke5 Bf6+ 3.Kf4 Bd4# ; b) 1.Qc1 Bxc1 2.Rg4 Rd2+ 3.Ke3 Kxg4=

 

Danka Petkova 100 MT Award by Petko Petkov

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Award Danka Petkova 100 MT

Dear Friends,
With great delay I publish the award of the tournament Danka Petkova 100 MT2020-2021, due to my long illness after a very unsuccessful and dangerous vaccination against Covid. I apologize to everyone who waited for this material. Many thanks to the participants in the tournament, to the winners – world-famous masters, as well as to the readers who will look with interest at the tournament problems!
Be Valium healthy, cheerful and happy in the New 2022
Yours: Petko Petkov