Happy New Year 2024!

Dear JF’s community,

I wish a Happy New Year to all of you!
Let’s support each other with a warm smile, a nice comment, a clever composition, with all what we do!

Yesterday I’ve got one more gift for all of you, the Award of JF-2022/I by Vlaicu Crișan! I will present it to you very soon!

This year I hope to meet many of you at WCCC 2024 in Jurmala. Our good time is in our hands. Let’s have fun!


I’m sorry, I will be rather busy in January. Please consider your originals for the periods starting February. – Julia


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


Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2023!

Dear Friends,
I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Let the cold and snow outside brings only the beauty. And the Christmas lights warm our hearts.

I have to apologize for a very quiet 2nd part of 2022 on JF. I’m sorry, this year turned to be too social for me! 🙂 Organizing ECSC in Riga in May, and taking active part in the organizing of WCSC in Fujairah in November; 6.YCCC; and now some work around the presentation of WFCC on social medias….
After all, the gift I’ve made to myself, the grey Arabian beauty from the photo who asks for my time too.

What to do now? In any case, there are no chances anymore to have the informal competition in this half-year. I haven’t published any problem after the end of JF-2022/I, but have got many of your problems. For some time I really hoped to be able to publish them this year. Now I have to ask all of you who sent me originals in September-December, if you’d accept to be published in January,2023? (I will be writing personal emails as well).

No, no, JF will not stop working. Let it be active again in 2023! The same time, I might need helpers in the future if continue to take part in some other activities of WFCC.

Be happy, creative, smiling, celebrating, composing, solving, producing, helping, … whatever brings you joy! – Julia


Contacting Peter Harris?

894-phDear Friends, Editors, I need your help, please! You all might know how many problems by Peter Harris I’ve published on JF. It’s about 125, since July, 2012 (no.39) when I started to publish original problems on JF. The last mail I’ve got from Peter was on the 13th of September, 2015 with 4 problems, asking to publish the three of them dedicated to the judges first (no.890,891,892 for Vlaicu Crisan, Dmitri TurevskiKjell Widlert) and the one for me, on my birthday, a few days later  (no.894). During these three years Peter had some periods of active composing and some pauses too, but not for 4 months.. Anyway, even without a new compositions, Peter would answer my mails with Diplomas for the recently rewarded problems if he would be well, I believe. The last weeks I’ve sent some more mails to Peter and also to his email provider, Vodamail (no answer); sms-es to his phone, and tried to call him too, but there’s answering machine only. I don’t have any contacts of Peter’s friends or relatives to ask about him. Maybe anybody has? Maybe anybody has heard anything from Peter after September, 2015? I believe, we must find out what we can about Peter. Thank you! – Julia


julia-311215Happy New Year 2016 to all my visitors, authors, commentators, judges!..

My best wishes to all of you and your families in the next year! Be successful, be creative and happy! 

I’d like to tell a special thanks to the judges who’ve finished their JF’s awards this year – to Hans Gruber, Eric Huber, Dmitri Turevski, Kjell Widlert, Vlaicu Crişan! And also to those who accepted the judging in this year and still have to work a lot – to Kostas Prentos, Thomas Brand, Ofer Comay! 

Thanks a lot to Shankar Ram, who’s made a list of problems published in July-December’2015, sending me updates to the database every week! I believe we all are grateful to Sébastien Luce for entering JF’s problems of 2015 in WinChloe’s Echecs database.  The solutions of animated PG problems published this year look nicer thanks to the additional functions written by Stephen Emmerson.

Thanks a lot to all commentators! Dear friends, you make this site much more interesting and useful, and many of you have helped to get much better versions of published problems.

I often have different questions.. to the authors who send me their problems to publish, to the programmers, to the judges of current competitions, and to other composers who might (to my believe) know the subject I need a help in. I get a lot of your help, detailed explanations, examples… Thank you so much for your responsiveness!

I’ll be happy to see all of you again on JF and in person in 2016! Have a nice celebration and till the meeting in the New Year!

Julia


Soft upgrade on JF

faviconDear Friends, today the soft upgrade (WordPress platform with related plugins) was done for JF. I’m sorry for any inconveniences you might have as the result! Some loses in the functionality are already found and fixed. Please, let me know if you find something that has stopped working as before! Thank you! – Julia.

WCCC2015: After Congress…

DSCN9368My first Congress is over several days ago, but half of my soul is still there, in Ostróda

My first intention was to write about the facts and things happened, but in reality during the Congress I had no time for posting anything, and now all facts are already known. I’ll share just a little of emotions here. 

It was amazing to meet so many famous people face to face, in so short time! I was a bit confused as I couldn’t remember everybody from the first meeting as I wished.. Name badges weren’t used for this Congress, so all I could do was asking Latvian delegate, Ilja Ketris, who is who. 🙂 Of course, it was great pleasure for me to see that most of people know me, and to hear so many warm and kind words! –> read more