Award JF-2014/II

Award of Julia’s Fairies 2014-II informal tournament

(May – August’ 2014)

Judge: Dmitri Turevsky

50 problems with versions by 33 composers from 17 countries (4 continents, 1 planet) took part in this tourney. The level of the problems was very high; it was a great pleasure to analyze them, for this pleasure I would like to thank Julia and all authors.

I have selected 17 problems for this award:

1^st Prize 557 (Chris Feather)

The plan is to mate bKd8 by Kd6-d7#. To make this move legal either the Imitator should be positioned on the first rank (which is impossible after Kd6-d7) or the neutral piece must stand exactly one square below the Imitator – on the square just vacated by it. So, to make it work the move Kd7 must be a capture of the neutral unit, that will be reborn on e1: Kxd7[Ie1->e2, +nBe1]#.

There’s no way for the pawn b7 to get to d7 without promoting, but which piece should it promote to?
Neutral queen or rook will not do, as they would check the black king on d8 from d7. Let’s note that pawn cannot be captured before promotion, so it should promote on b1, bringing the Imitator all the way down along with it. Therefore, getting the neutral piece back to the 7th rank while leaving the Imitator on the first rank will require at some point the capture by the black king and rebirth of the neutral piece on the e8. But the neutral knight would check the wKd6 from e8, so the pawn necessarily must be promoted into a neutral bishop.
After the pawn excelsior ending with bishop promotion, if we virtually move the bishop to d7 and the bK to d8, the imitator will end up 6 squares to the north and 4 squares to the east of its desired square e1 (outside the board). To compensate for this the bK must capture the bishop on the square that is exactly 6 squares to the south and 4 squares to the west from the rebirth square e8 – which is a2.
Let’s count the moves: 1-5.b7-b1=nB 6.nBb1-a2 7-13.Kb8*a2 (+nBe8) 14-20.Ka2-d8 21.nBe8-d7 – now the imitator should be on e1 again. What’s wrong? A-ha, the bK and the bishop can’t simultaneously get to a2 – that would bring the Imitator far below the first rank. Instead of adjusting the imitator position in one big leap, we should arrange several captures in the upper part of the board that will add up to the desired shift!
As it turns out, the fastest way to achieve the required configuration is unique, Loydesque and requires 4 (!) captures on 4 different squares.
With me? Let’s get to the interesting part.
Why not deliver mate to the bKc8 (or e8) by Kd6-c7(e7)# (without capturing) then? This will not require precise positioning of the Imitator – it only has to stay one square to the right (left) of the neutral piece (now it can also be a rook or a queen) before the mating move.
The answer is about parity. Note that imitator changes the color of the square it stands on, only when so does the piece it imitates. Now let’s take a look at the starting squares. Initially the bK and the Imitator stand on squares of the same shade, and the nP stands on the square of different shade. So when the bK would stand on the c8 the Imitator and the nP would stand on squares of the same shade (no matter the promotion and other non-capturing moves). But if the Imitator and the neutral piece stand on the squares of same shade one can’t stand one square to the right to the other just before the wK move! It means that to make it work we need to move a piece from dark square to light square (or vice versa), without imitator imitating it. In other words, the pawn must be promoted on b1 to something that can move to a dark square (nB is out) and that can be captured by the black king – nQ cannot be approached by the bK, and nS cannot be reborn on e8, which leaves only the nR. The capture of the rook on the dark squares must happen an odd number of times.
This plan should work, but as the nR is harder to approach by nK than a nB, it takes much longer to accomplish. After 1.Kc8 2-6.b7-b1=nR (If1) it is not even the fastest plan (the fastest ends with this position: bKh8, nRc8, Id2 on the 41st move: 41…Kd6-c5[Ic1]#).
However, Kc7# is a very strong try. If the Imitator started from a light square, e.g. f7, it would only take 13 moves (including 5 for the bishop excelsior) and one rebirth to deliver the Kc7# checkmate.
With just few strokes the composer has created not a chess problem, but a tiny fairy world to explore.

2^nd Prize 546.1 (Franz Pachl)

White Chinese pieces g6, g5 and g4 guard d6, d8 and d7 via the e6. The plan is to retract RAe6 and deliver an anti-battery mate by moving one of these pieces to e6. The piece that would make the mating move would not regain guard of its corresponding square and this should be accounted for by self-block with the Rd5. However, after RAe6 is retracted, any move by Rd5 would check the Ka2. Keeping in mind that b6 must be guarded at some point, black with their first move must anticipatory close g8-a2 by playing to c4. This move introduces the first device of Chinese-specific control of the anti-battery line: depending on which piece plays to c4, only one of three possible squares for retraction of RAe6 – f4, e2, c1 – is available in respect to black lines a4-f4 & a6-e2 being enabled, making the white first move unique. This move by RAe6 in turn introduces the second device of the kind: black vaos h6 & h5 either directly or potentially guard the arrival squares, so of three possible pieces to fire the anti-battery one must be picked carefully.

An epic conception altogether.

3^rd Prize 569.2 (Mario Parinello & Nikola Predrag)

White can mate with either rook or bishop, but black has two rooks and two bishops to parry the possible threat by exploiting the Disparate condition. So, one of the black pieces must be incarcerated and another must be pinned. In a truly helpmate manner neither is destined be captured. The choice of the mating move and economy of the setting both add to the perfection.

4^th Prize 543.1 (Michal Dragoun & Ladislav Jr. Salai & Emil Klemanič)

The mechanism of this cyclic change of the black 1^st and 2^nd moves is based on the lions power. The first three half-moves are used to enable the three white lines that intersect in three critical squares – d4, d7 & g6. Black enables the first line and allows the white lion to enable the second line by making hop over the black piece just arrived. Additionally, black moves each guard one of three mating lines in anti-dual fashion. A genuinely fairy (white lines activation device), very clever and economic composition.

1^st Honourable mention 554 (Petko Petkov)

Very beautiful echo with change of functions, unexpected battery creation and subtle anticipation which white diagonal would be required to stay closed in the final position (2…cSc5/cSb6=wcB). The “Chameleon Trio” effect, as coined by author, would stand more prominent in my opinion, if it was realized without captures (especially with fairy condition like AntiAndernach that hugely affects the role of capture).

2^nd Honourable mention 561 (Georgy Evseev)

Very attractive and complex idea that makes a solid impression: black builds a battery and an anti-battery that fire simultaneously after the bi-valve move by black knight. In the twin the battery lines are switched: the battery line becomes anti-battery line and vice versa, and the mating bi-valve move is played by different knight in different direction. The cook-stopping wBb2 that gets captured in both twins and technical wLEb1 are absolutely acceptable to my taste.

3^rd Honourable mention 581 (Juraj Lörinc)

Another excellent series-mover, but with absolutely different aesthetics (as compared to the No 557). Here beauty is found in the PA/VA interplay and orthogonal-diagonal echo between the solutions.

4^th Honourable mention 556 (Julia Vysotska)

The theme of this problem is about its finales. All three fairy elements – neutrals, chameleons and anticirce are packed together in a static checkmate position with lot of tension. Why neutral piece that mates by single check cannot hide away? Non-capturing moves introduce new checks by different chameleon and capture is illegal in the same fashion – now checks threat from the rebirth square! Combining two absolutely different finales of this kind is a great achievement.

5^th Honourable mention 551 (Igor Kochulov)

Double check by pair of neutral line pieces is answered by double check by the same pair of pieces! Exploiting of the same setup for both parts of the duplex, as happens in duplex helpselfmates (however few) is carefully avoided here.

6^th Honourable mention 538 (Petko Petkov)

Amusing idea of using Disparate in logical style. The plan is to mate by S-like promotion on g8, but doing so immediately fails to unique Disparate-specific refutation by the neutral piece of the same kind. To account for that white forces black (using Disparate again!) to capture one of the neutral pieces and, depending on which piece was captured, carries out the initial plan. Some cyclic patterns with reciprocal captures of neutral pieces can be found in variations of the tries, but as checks make a very poor first move, I prefer to see them as logical, not strategic tries.

1^st Сommendation 585 (Neal Turner)

Royal grasshoppers pair very nicely with SAT. Their limited mobility and yet long reach allows creating such beautiful head-scratchers with flight squares on and off all over the board and selfmate-specific paradox where black defenses are answered with the exact move these defenses rely on to parry the threat.

2^nd Сommendation  582 (Hubert Gockel)

Excellent hesitating moves by bR and very subtle and clever twinning in this fine Back-to-Back miniature.

3^rd Сommendation  571 (Václav Kotěšovec)

Hoppers are known to be very well fit for making problems with different kinds of switchbacks and round trips. Here, using certain amount of computer time, I believe, the author managed to show the 14-move round trip of the black king ending in an ideal mate with 5 self-blocks by black NHs.

4^th Сommendation  552 (Peter Harris)

Thanks to the SuperCirce condition the black pieces cannot be effectively removed from the board by capture. Thus more inventive ways of limiting their mobility are required. In this problem they include: incarceration, rebirth of the pawn to the 8th rank, rebirth of the pawn in front of the blocker, block of the rebirth square, AntiCirce-specific pin and, most notably, a feature that unifies two solutions – reciprocal spike of black pieces – in the first solution the bB is used to spike the bQ and in the second the bQ is used to spike the bB.

Сommendation, e.a 572 (Pierre Tritten)

Very elegant Zilahi cycle with model mates. The strategy is not very complicated even by orthodox standards.

Сommendation, e.a 578 (Ladislav Packa)

Promoted pawn visits two of the three magic squares e3, f3, g2 in a cycle. It is very nice to see a problem with a cycle of squares, when trend in cyclic problems is about the cycles of moves and the cycles of functions. I prefer this position to the AUW version with four solutions.

Сommendation, e.a 549 (Sebastien Luce)

Mixed neutral AUW in a very economical setting (material-wise). B-promotion is a pure block of the rebirth square e1, but S-promotion also very “unfortunately” guards f3. If not for this guard, the AntiCirce Couscous specific dual avoidance on e1 could have placed this problem much higher in the award.

Dmitry Turevsky
Moscow, July 2015