On the 28th of August I was the host/organizer/director of the 47th Latvian Chess Solving Championship. It was a long break of 1.5 years since our previous solving competition. And I wasn’t sure about possible number of participants, especially juniors. But to my surprise we had 16 participants in Riga, among them a team of 4 Lithuanian solvers, and also 9 solvers at the 2nd location, Belgrade.
In Riga, my living room was rearranged into solving hall, and even some places were offered in the garden! 🙂
I had a lot of work, still feeling tired, but also one more nice experience. I’m very much grateful to my assistant in Riga, Antons Gajevskis, who took part in problems selection presenting many problems by Latvian composers. My special thanks to Borislav Gadjanski for being a local controller in Belgrade! And finally, I’m very much touched with the wonderful support by the composers! – the championship had 7 original problems (out of 14): Igor Agapov (#3), Christopher Jones (h#3), Petko Petkov (s#3), Marjan Kovačević (#2 & hs#2.5), Steffen Nielsen (+), Vlaicu Crişan & Eric Huber (hs#3).
Yes, yes, I couldn’t miss a chance to promote Fairies 🙂 – Latvian Championship had a HS# problem in each round! Those two problems were composed to be enjoyable and “solvable”, to promote my favorite genre to the solvers. The authors don’t intend to publish them anywhere else, so I’d like to present them to our community – enjoy some quick solving as a candy to your coffee!
Some more photos in my Google Album 47. Latv. champ.
The competition is published on the official calendar Other rated/remarkable solving tournaments 2021
Astonishing! More like a Picnic at Julia’s Fairy Garden, than a a solving event! Some familiar faces. I wonder at the amount of effort behind this wonderful celebration of chess problems. My congratulations and best wishes.