Tournaments and Awards – Page 4

Award JF 2021/II (Shankar Ram)

Awards, JF January 1, 2022 January 1, 2022 6 Comments

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)

Awards, JF December 31, 2021 December 31, 2021 Leave a comment

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

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!

An update to JF 10 JT

Tournamens, JF November 26, 2021 November 26, 2021 Leave a comment

An important update to JF 10 JT

Maximum number of pieces: 15
The discount works up to the deadline for submissions, 10.02.2022 🙂
The maximum number of pieces changed from 12 to 15 considering some further thoughts and some of your comments.

The Jubilee composing tournament JF 10 JT dedicated to 10 years of JF (10.04.2012-10.04.2022) | announcement in PDF

Let’s find and show something the best of what we know the best!

JF 10 JT (C10.02.2022)

Tournamens, JF November 10, 2021 January 8, 2022 14 Comments

JF 10 JT

Julia’s Fairies is pleased to announce the Jubilee composing tournament JF 10 JT
Dedicated to 10 years of JF (10.04.2012-10.04.2022)

Let’s find and show something the best of what we know the best!

The background: on April 10th, 2022 the JF website will celebrate its 10 years. see/hide more…

By that time about 1700 original fairy problems will be published. Some problems are pleasant little things, some others are head breaking complexes. And some are only for the selected groups of experts or followers. On JF, new ideas and new fairy elements are mixed with the old ones. And I hope JF has something to offer to each fairy taste!
It took me a while to make some decisions about the thematic condition for this JT, after consulting Kjell Widlert, who generously accepted to be the judge. No, I didn’t want to limit it to the promotion of a concrete fairy element and to receive many similar problems in the award. Also, it wouldn’t be fair to offer only my favourites, and I didn’t want to have no restrictions at all, as in the informal tournaments.
Then, coming to the beginning: creating JF I wanted to learn about the world of fairies together with all of you: while publishing your problems, while reading comments. It turned out that the variety of fairy elements is too big (around 2.700!), and nobody is really able to follow the play in all of them. Each of us selects some problems for their own taste and ability to understand (and to enjoy!).
As the result of this tournament, I’d like to have the selection of “reader-friendly” fairy problems. I’d like them to be accepted by newcomers and enjoyable for experienced composers. Let it be a touch of the most popular fairy elements of the last 10 years, to mark that period and to promote fairy chess!
Christian Poisson was so kind as to make for me a statistic for fairy pieces and conditions from Echecs database, with the numbers of problems using them since 2012. The same kind of extraction I’ve made from JF’s database. I have taken the top 21 of fairy pieces and the top 21 of conditions from both of them, selected those matching ones, removed several too complicated/doubtful for the idea… and finally made a list of most popular fairy elements of the last 10 years. So, please, let’s find and show something the best of what we know the best!

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). (update 08.01.2022)

Stipulations for three sections: (A) #2-4; (B) h#2-4; (C) hs#3-4
Maximum number of pieces: 15

Fairy pieces and conditions: The idea of the tournament is to present most popular fairy pieces and conditions of the last 10 years. Problems should have at least one fairy piece or fairy condition, and at most two different fairy pieces/families, and/or at most two different fairy conditions from the lists below. Any other fairy pieces or conditions are not allowed.

See/hide accepted fairy pieces and conditions

Number of entries per composer: 3 entries per composer in total, in one section only or spread over several sections.

Joint problems: Allowed; a joint work counts as 1 for the group of composers, and less than 1 for each of them (if there are 2 composers of the joint problem, it’s counted as 0.5 entry for each).

Deadline: February 10^th 2022

Judge: Kjell Widlert

Tournament director: Julia Vysotska
Please, send computer tested problems only (indicate the program used for testing), to julia@juliasfairies.com

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

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

See Examples in the PDF announcement JF10JT. Welcome to take part!!! – Julia

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

Awards, JF November 10, 2021 November 10, 2021 Leave a comment

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 4^th June 2017, published two years before the predecessor.

The correction 1223.2 was published in 24^th 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 1^st 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…

Composing tournaments in the frames of 63.WCCC

Tournaments, other October 7, 2021 October 8, 2021 1 comment

Internet Tourney Announcement

Helpmates in 2 to 3 moves are required with neutral units (pawns included, kings not allowed). In each phase a neutral unit plays when it is Black’s turn to move and later when it is White’s turn to move or vice versa. The thematic moves could be played immediately (one right after the other) or with a delay. Fairy pieces are allowed, but fairy conditions are not. Set play, twins and multiple solutions are allowed, but not duplex or zero-positions. Composers may participate with two entries as a maximum.

Closing date: 25 September 2021 | Controller: Themis Argirakopoulos | Judge: Kostas Prentos

WCCC 2021 Internet tourney announcement

Champagne Tourney Rhodes 2021
The Tourney is divided in 2 sections (with separate awards) : A . ProofGames ; B. Any other kind of Retro problems
Theme (in honour of Nikita Plaksin for his 90th birthday) : The same piece captures at least 2 promoted pieces.
(capturing piece is a Pawn in the examples but any other kind of capturing piece is accepted)
Fairy conditions (but not fairy pieces) allowed in both sections. Maximum 2 entries per composer per section (collaboration counts for 1 full entry). Maximum 1 non computer tested entry per composer in section A

WCCC-2021-Champagne-tourney-announcement

Entries to the director Eric Pichouron, by Wednesday 20 October 20:00 PM, e-mail : chess.champagne2021@gmail.com
Judge: Michel Caillaud

19^th Romanian Tzuica Tourney
Theme: Helpself compositions (hs#n/hs=n) with at least 2 solutions showing each at least one Pelle move.
Problems with twins or zeroposition are allowed. All fairy pieces and conditions are accepted, provided that the problem is checked by a known solving program

WCCC-2021-Tzuica-tourney-announcement

Judges: Vlaicu Crişan & Eric Huber (Romania) | Deadline: Wednesday, 20 October 8 p.m
Send to: Eric Huber by e-mail at hubereric@yahoo.fr
Prizes – bottles of Tzuica, hopefully deliverable during 2021 WCCC. The tourney is open worldwide, however the prizes will be for 2021 congress participants only.

JT PIV-90

Tournaments, other September 1, 2021 September 1, 2021 10 Comments

JT “PIV-90”

Direct two-movers with black promotions to fairy pieces leading to mates with white promotions to fairy pieces. The key and threat (if any) must not be promotions. The position has to be legal, i.e. possible in a game with P promotions allowed to the fairy piece(s) used in the problem. Any fairy pieces allowed, but no fairy conditions

Prizes in chess literature | Judges: Kjell Widlert and Valeriu I. Petrovici | Sendings until 30.11.2021 to d.i.nicula@gmail.com

5.YCCC for young composers!

Tournaments, other August 11, 2021 August 11, 2021 Leave a comment

Dear composers, please share this information with the younger generation!

All young chess composers, and those who would like to try their hands in this kind of chess art, are invited to take part in the 5^th Youth Chess Composing Challenge which is open to the U23 generation (born no earlier than 01.01.1998), and to all different genres of chess composition.

Two sections of the tournament have thematic conditions (#2 & endgame), but the 3^rd one is with a FREE theme and genre! So, it might be a fairy problem as well! 🙂

The deadline for submission of the entries is 30^th September, to the email address 5yccc@wfcc.ch
The results are planned to be announced on 22^th October 2021, during the Closing ceremony of the Rhodes WCCC 2021.

Some more information about the project is shared by Marjan Kovačević on MatPlus.

– Julia Vysotska, 5.YCCC director

Award JF 2017/I

Awards, JF August 7, 2021 August 7, 2021 Leave a comment

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, 14^th August, I’ll continue to publish original problems. Please, take your time for final corrections before sending them. 13^th of August would be the best day to start sending your best problems ! 🙂

Composing Tournaments of the RIFACE 2021, C11.07.2021

Tournaments, other July 9, 2021 July 9, 2021 2 Comments

The 42^nd RIFACE 2021 (Rencontre Internationale en France des Amateurs de Composition Echiquéenne) will take place at Charenton-le-Pont near Paris, July 9-12, 2021.

Themes of composing tournaments:

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

Address to send the entries : RIFACE.2021@gmail.com for Helpmates and Fairies problems ; retro.riface2021@gmail.com for retro problems
Time limit to send the entries : Sunday 11^th July at 15:00 (French time)