ANDA FAIRY PLANET No.3
by Petko A. Petkov
(included in the Articles sec.)
The worldwide viral pandemic turned out to be much stronger than my plans for the regular release of
ANDA FAIRY PLANET and the publication of results from the international DANKA PETKOVA 100 MT,
which aroused great interest – I received over 60 originals from world-famous masters! … (Petko A. Petkov)
JF Original Problems | February 2021
The judge of JF-2021-I: not appointed yet.
The judge of Retro & PG problems 2021-2022: not appointed yet.
Dear authors, I’m very sorry for a long delay! Working overtime in my office, enjoying financial audit, annual report and related issues 🙂 I’ll keep being slow up to the middle of March, but later hope to be more active on JF!
Animated diagrams use Py2Web by Dmitri Turevski and WinChloe‘s graphics, Christian Poisson
Günther Weeth (1935-2020) himself had prepared this translation of his article published in Die Schwalbe 306-2/2020. p.821 ff. in November 2020 in German language. We have made some small adaptions replacing examples 5&9 with new versions as the Schwalbe-originals had turned out to be incorrect. However the original source of those versions is “Die Schwalbe 2020, version 2021”.
K.Wenda, A.Thoma
…So far my first explorations in the ”new territories”.
I hope I could draw the attention of retro-experts on the combination AntiCirce + Circe inspiring them to continue my studies.
Günther Weeth /Stuttgart, November 2020/
In memory of Günther Weeth
(13 August 1935 – 28 December 2020)
By Klaus Wenda (Vienna, Austria)
On 28 December 2020, Thomas Brand’s Retro-blog featured truly sad news: Günther Weeth had died after a long and severe disease.
Günther Weeth became a member of Die Schwalbe, the German association for Problem chess, in 1973 and earned his first spurs as a strong solver. Due to the friendship with retro specialist Josef Haas, his interest in retro analysis awoke. The traditional Christmas solving tourneys of the newspaper “Stuttgarter Zeitung”, widely known by an international problem solving audience, offered him the perfect arena to thrill, or sometimes exasperate, the participants with his witty and tricky riddles.
Since the summer of 2020, Günther intensively worked on a new project, the defensive retractor with the conditions AntiCirce+Circe. He presented the results of his analysis, decorated with some quite original problems, in an article in Die Schwalbe, 306-2/2020, pp. 821-824. Günther still translated the piece into English before his passing. It is expected to be published in Julia’s Fairies soon.
My sincere sympathies go to Günther’s family, especially to his wife Gudrun, who always appreciated his time-consuming hobby, problem chess. An eminent problemist left Caissa’s World – and I have lost a good friend.
3 problems by Günther Weeth: G.W. – König & Turm 2011 | G.W. – StrateGems 2016 | K.W. & G.W. – Die Schwalbe 287/2017
Vienna, January 2021
Klaus Wenda
Problems by Günther Weeth published on JF 2015-2019: No. 885 | 1223 | 1261 | 1322 | 1357 | 1440
JF Original Problems | January 2021
The judge of JF-2021-I: not appointed yet.
The judge of Retro & PG problems 2021-2022: not appointed yet.
Animated diagrams use Py2Web by Dmitri Turevski and WinChloe‘s graphics, Christian Poisson
JF Original Problems | December, 2020
The judge of JF-2020/II: Hans Gruber.
The judge of Retro & PG problems 2019-2020: Vlaicu Crișan.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2021 !
My very best wishes to everybody!
(19.12.) Julia’s illness is over! ⇒
Animated diagrams use Py2Web by Dmitri Turevski and WinChloe‘s graphics, Christian Poisson
What happens in our Going Forward to Light and Order project? While I haven’t followed the project for about 3 weeks, the team was continuously discovering new highlights and new questions as well. Tonight I couldn’t provide any summary of the current situation, but let me show you some moments jumped into my eyes. Later on the members of the team might comment something more, and of course, all of us would appreciate your comments (and joining to the team as well! 🙂 )
Shankar always makes some nice graphical presentations for us. So, I’d like to share something with you:
“I did a small analysis of the way Leapers evolve into Riders, Hoppers and other related types. This scheme generates 116 different pieces – some of them possibly not yet used and/or named!
Note: the 116 pieces are generated from only the 3 basic leapers: Wazir, Fers and Wazir+Fers(Erlking). Another 63 can be added with the Knight evolving into Nightrider/Rose, N-Hopper, Nao, N-Lion, etc. Adding up to 179 Pieces!”
Of course, the discussion goes in different directions, and can go continuously deeper and deeper, as Vlaicu commented:
Human imagination has actually no limits! 🙂
“What we need to do immediately is make a selection of some popular elements belonging to each of the main groups and fill out the intended details like history, popularity, supporting software and example problems to put into a publicly viewable and searchable database on JF. This will give some immediate benefit and feedback. We can then fine tune our work to improve it further.” (Shankar)
Thanks a lot to everybody involved!
JF Original Problems | November, 2020(2)
The judge of JF-2020/II: Hans Gruber.
The judge of Retro & PG problems 2019-2020: Vlaicu Crișan.
Coming soon: nobody in the waiting list…
Animated diagrams use Py2Web by Dmitri Turevski and WinChloe‘s graphics, Christian Poisson
Going Forwardby Shankar Ram
Our chess problem field is not gaining as many new followers as it should. There is a competition for ways to spend leisure time: various other board and video games – most of them available online, as well as the old ways like music, movies, serials, sports – again mostly online. Also, the regular game is experiencing a boom, with more OTB and online tournaments. But here too, players are less interested in chess problems, than before.
In this atmosphere, we should try to make our hobby as attractive as possible for newcomers. The biggest area in chess problems is the category of fairy chess. Here, more and more new forms are being invented. The easy availability of chess problem solving software is probably helping in this. But this has created a big obstacle for the newcomer, who might well be scared away by the plethora of incomprehensible terms under the diagrams!
Therefore, this project is an attempt to provide an easy and helpful way for a newcomer to find the definition of an unfamiliar fairy element, as well as some additional information about its history, popularity, software supporting this element and of course, some carefully selected example problems which bring out the characteristics of the element.
In the process of this project, we need to classify the various elements into groups and sub-groups, along with linkages between similar elements – in short, produce a taxonomy or knowledge organisation of fairy chess elements. This will aid understanding, meet the human need for orderliness, and help to check whether a particular element is already existing.
Of course, various sources are available online, many of which meet the above objectives. These have been used as the basis or foundation for this project. All of them have been listed and acknowledged. However, all of them have some shortcomings in terms of completeness, being up-to-date, clarity, example problems and organisation. Our project is an attempt to address all these shortcomings.
We welcome all comments and suggestions!
A great work to classify fairy elements has been already done mostly by Shankar Ram and Chris Tylor! (Julia)
JF Original Problems | November, 2020
The judge of JF-2020/II: Hans Gruber.
The judge of Retro & PG problems 2019-2020: Vlaicu Crișan.
Coming soon: nobody in the waiting list…
Animated diagrams use Py2Web by Dmitri Turevski and WinChloe‘s graphics, Christian Poisson
