A judge for the RETRO / PG 2023-24 – Thierry LE GLEUHER
I believe I have a day of the wonderful news! So, one more important news, especially for Retro and Proof Games composers: please, welcome your judge – Thierry Le Gleuher, who will take care of the tournament JF-R2023-24!
Thierry LE GLEUHER (France and Canada), born in 1959, composes mainly in retro genre. About 600 problems for 193 awards in international tournaments and championships. World Champion 2001-2003 of composition in retro genre. His works are often unexpected enigmas, and he favors in his approach the quality offered by the work to the solutionist. It is prudent to avoid hasty conclusions when looking for the solution. Thierry le Gleuher probably hid a finesse behind a back door!
Titles : French Champion in retro solving trounament (2009, 2011,2022) | World Champion of the FIDE for chess composition (2001-03) | International Master of the FIDE for chess composition (2010) | International Judge of the FIDE for retro (2014)
Occupations : Retro section editor of Phénix | Phénix website editor | Writer of the retro section of FIDE albums
New judge for JF-2013/II – Sébastien Luce
A good news!! JF has a new judge for the competition JF-2013/II as a replacement to Diyan Kostadinov appointed before – Sébastien Luce!
I’m grateful to Sébastien (France) for kindly offering his help. Some words from Sébastien I am glad to share with you:
Born 1963, playing OTB chess intensively since being eight, including World junior championship in 1982. International Master since 1990, five times French team champion with Clichy. Progressively stopped competitions to become a professional chess trainer. Beginning composing in 2012, with a complete opus of more than 2500 problems (not all published yet), mainly in fairies.
I like paradoxes, and would like to present myself as a composer with the only orthodox #3 I have produced. It is a Plachutta Azerbaïdjan.
I saw on JF the demand of Julia to judge the Part II of JF 2013, after the resignation of the previous judge. I accepted with pleasure !
The judge of JF-2023: K. Seetharaman
Dear composers, I’m happy to announce our judge for informal fairy tournament JF-2023 – the well known Indian composer Seetharaman Kalyan! I believe everybody knew Seetharaman as one of the most active members of chess problem society. Have to mention that Seetharaman was also one of the first visitors of just created Julia’sFairies website in April 2012, the one who was always ready to comment some new publications, to support any new ideas. Currently Seetharaman is editing fairy section of The Problemist. One of his most known inventions is Super Guards fairy condition (2012; 14 problems with SuperGuards published on JF). Composes problems in all genres. Age 74.
I’m very grateful to Seetharaman for his support and his good will in doing this job for JF!
JF10JT: a week to the deadline
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
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)
An update to JF 10 JT
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)
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…
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 10th 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 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 PDF announcement JF10JT. Welcome to take part!!! – Julia
Ofer Comay – the judge of JF-2021/I
Dear composers, now I’m glad to announce to you that our fairy judge for JF-2021-I (01.01.2021-30.06.2021) will be Ofer Comay!
It was not so long ago, August 2015, when Ofer accepted to be the judge of JF-2015-II. In the tournaments section you can find a great work done by Ofer with over 100 problems of that tournament:
| JF-2015-II | f | 2015-07-01 | 2015-12-31 | Ofer Comay | ->See the Award! |
To my words from before I’d like to add I’m very grateful to Ofer for supporting JF (and me) the 2nd time, for his positive, objective and human approach, for the nice personality and great experience we will enjoy on JF again! Well, I believe other editors understand how I feel. They know how it is not easy to look for the judges, to ask for such a big work… and then not really knowing how to find words for being thankful enough.
Important information from the judge to the composers: “I will split the tournament to two sections: 1) problems like hs, serial, with no fairy pieces and conditions;
2) problems with fairy pieces and/or fairy conditions.”
Welcome to JF-2020/II !
Welcome to JF-2020/II !
Dear composers, thank you for your patience in waiting for me to get ready for the next step after the weeks I devoted to adjusting JF website to the upgrades made by the hoster.
Now I’m glad to welcome your works for the next fairy tournament, JF-2020/II (July – December,2020)!
Let’s welcome our judge, who will be judging JF’s competition already for the 2nd time, previously it was Retro and PG problems 2013-2014:
The judge: Hans Gruber – German composer, solver, judge and organizer, specialized in fairy chess and retro problems, long lasting collaborator of the fairy chess magazine feenschach, and the president of Die Schwalbe, the German association of problemists. Hans has been doing a great service to chess composition, as an International Judge (since 1985) in not less than seven genres: moremovers, endgames, selfmates, helpmates, fairies, retro and mathematical problems!
I’m deeply grateful to Hans for accepting my invitation!