Recently, I spent some fun time testing old fairy PGs with François Labelle’s program, Jacobi. Although it is still practically impossible to fully test some of the longer problems with Jacobi, partial tests give a good idea on whether a PG is sound or not.

Revisiting an old composing tourney (Tournoi de Noël, France-Echecs 2006-2007) to test some of my own entries, I ended up with this new PG. It turns out the content is familiar: The 1 st Prize from that tourney by David Antonini and Nicolas Dupont was cooked and the authors’ efforts to correct it were unsuccessful. Later, Paul Raican published a correction. Paul Raican, after David Antonini & Nicolas Dupont, diagrammes 2009: 1.d4 h5 2.Bh6 g5 3.d5 Bg7 4.Qd4 c5 5.dxc6 e.p. d5 6.c7 Bh3 7.c8=S Sd7 8.Qxa7 Qxc8 9.c4 Qxc4 10.e4 dxe4 11.f4 exf3 e.p. 12.Sc3 fxg2 13.Sf3 gxf1=S 14.Se5 Bxe5 15.0-0-0 Bxh2 16.Rdxf1 0-0-0.

Although the core content (double Valladão with Schnoebelen promotions) and parts of the mechanism are similar, this version features the theme for one side, with the exception of one of the castlings. (Author)