Award JF-2015/II

The Award of Julia’s Fairies 2015/II
informal tournament

(July – December, 2015)

Judge: Ofer Comay

I received 127 problems of various fairy types – an amazing number of problems which were published in a period of only 6 months. Julia’s animations and the clear definitions of the fairy pieces and conditions helped me a lot.

The level was very high, and after looking into the problems I had a list of over 60 candidates for the final award. But the final list contains only 40 problems, and I apologize for all those problems which were left out, and surely could be included if the total number of problems was smaller.

1^st-2^nd Prize. N.Shankar Ram, No. 950. An incredible achievement! There are 3 Alfil-Dababa riders which guard mates on 4 thematic squares: f3, d3, f5, d5. After the 1st black move, 3 of those mating squares will be guarded twice and one three times. The variations create Keller paradox effects – in the 2nd and 3rd move white sacrifices on the square which is guarded more times than the others…

1^st-2^nd Prize. Vlaicu Crișan, No. 958. A condensed usage of the TM conditions, with a perfect ODT symmetry. Very elegant, and I found it is amazing that such rich content can be achieved with only 8 pieces!

3^rd Prize. Kjell Widlert & Thomas Maeder, No. 897. Great hesitating moves of half neutral piece with unity in tries. Formally, the original problem of Kjell is a predecessor. One might say that the difference between this version and the original version is “only” one additional hesitating move in each solution. But the tries in the first move provide great bonus and anyhow I couldn’t reward this masterpiece anything less.

4^th-5^th Prize. Petko A. Petkov, No. 968. A very powerful demonstration of super pawns in a TM problem. The author achieved a rich harmonic ODT problem with TM effects and promotions. The neutral pieces are moved by white only – and this is a minus – but obviously such rich problem cannot be shown with white officers instead of the neutral officers without cooks.

4^th-5^th Prize. Juraj Lörinc, No. 978. A beautiful reflex with three echo lines. The 4th variation is a nice bonus.

6^th-8^th Prize. N.Shankar Ram, No. 849. Another problem with mathematical nature from Shankar Ram. After the key bK has 4 flights. Black is in Zug Zwang and should move 3 out of 4 grasshoppers during the play, each move creates a guard of one flight. Therefore, in each one of the many variations, black will create guards to 3 flights and wSe8 will mate and also guard the 4th flight. wSe8 can go to the 4 final positions (f4,d4,g3,c3) in the original position, and each knight move reduces one possibility. All that create a machine with 4!=24 sub-variations, just like the first prize in this award… Very interesting!

6^th-8^th Prize. Petko A. Petkov, No. 895. An interesting change of functions between three Chinese pieces: PAa6, NAc8 and RAa3. Each one of the squares f6, f5, e4 is blocked in each solution by a sentinel pawn, and the other two by the other two Chinese pieces which unfortunately do not move. The first two queen moves lack of unity, but this was not a minus – I liked the different and interesting motivations that made these queen moves unique. The only thing that bothered me is that this is not really cyclic change of functions, because each thematic piece has the same role in 2 solutions out of three.

6^th-8^th Prize. Mario Parrinello, No. 910. The final position demonstrates 4 pinned pieces on the same line! Beautiful.

9^th Prize. Igor Kochulov, No. 858. Interesting duplex with tight correspondence between the super circe moves. Clever first quite move with beautiful captures following it. Very entertaining! I was delighted to see that duplex can be so interesting and unexpected.

10^th Prize. Borislav Gadjanski, No. 880. The white king is mated on three different squares, in each solution two thematic white pieces are pinned and the 3rd sacrifices itself.

11^th Prize. Petko A. Petkov, No. 944. Interesting chameleon moves.

1^st Honourable mention. Igor Kochulov, No. 592.1. White cannot capture the king because a1 is occupied (Be5xf6=Ra1?). Therefore, after the Bristol key, every move with Qa1 is a check, but each queen move destroys a guard of one of the bK moves. But black is in ZZ, and every move he makes will block one bK move. Very clever and beautiful usage of the fairy conditions.

2^nd-4^th Honourable mention. Petko A. Petkov, No. 900. The roses b3,d2 draw a big circle around the black king in 5 solutions. Nice but slightly mechanical, with repetition of the same mate.

2^nd-4^th Honourable mention. Petko A. Petkov, No. 914. Bristol effect in TM with Berolina super pawns.

2^nd-4^th Honourable mention. N.Shankar Ram, No. 955. A 6×6 cycle of white and black moves. The achievement is great but mechanical.

5^th Honourable mention. Georgy Evseev, No. 936. A beautiful concept with Disparate condition. There is no threat, because after each white line black will move a piece to g3 and prevent the mate due to disparate condition. But black is in ZZ, and every move to g3 blocks the other two black pieces, but also prevents a white move because of the Disparate condition, leaving only one possible continuation. Very nice concept! There are obvious aesthetic defects – the position is extremely heavy and illegal. It is interesting to note that the author could select other legal and lighter realizations, but he preferred to keep the unity in the motivations of the white moves. For example, White: Sb7 Bc6 Pd6 Pe6 Pa5 Rb5 Rc5 Ke5 Pc3; Black: Pa7 Pd7 Ka6 Pg5 Pf4 Bh4 Pe3 Rf3 Ph3 Pf2 Sh1; 1.c4! or White: Kb8 Pa7 Pb7 Pa6 Rb6 Bc6 Ba5 Pd4 Sb3 Pf2; Black: Pd5 Kc4 Pe4 Pf4 Pd3 Pe3 Rf3 Pg3 Pa2 Pd2 Be1 Sh1. 1.a8=S! I believe that Georgy preference shows the significant change in the artistic valuation of problems during the last decade.

6^th Honourable mention. Vlaicu Crişan & Eric Huber, No. 866. Beautiful ODT with a clever usage of the half neutral pieces.

7^th Honourable mention. Ladislav Packa & Daniel Novomeský, No. 973. Excellent HS#5 problem with ZZ in the finale.

8^th Honourable mention. Pierre Tritten, No. 938. Extensive TM problem with a perfect ODT symmetry. The knights are used as mediators to allow the white pieces and the black king reach their final destination.

9^th Honourable mention. Eric Huber, No. 982. Surprising, original and clever combination of neutral night riders, phantom chess and republican chess in helpselfmate problems. I was surprised that a H#2 problem with 3 pieces can be so rich!

10^th Honourable mention. Sébastien Luce, No. 969.1. W&B valadaos in W&B maximummer .

11^th Honourable mention. Aleksey Oganesjan & Vitaly Medintsev, No. 975. A content rich problem showing Zilahi, Bristol and black sacrifices which allow ZZ.

12^th Honourable mention. Peter Harris, No. 892. Surprising solutions with 2 pieces on the board!

1^st Commendation. Diyan Kostadinov & Georgy Evseev, No. 985.1. A nice combination of Phantom chess, kobul kings and promotions.

2^nd Commendation. Kenneth Solja, No. 907. Interesting pieces. The tour from one corner to the other and the beautiful ZugZwang in the last move are superb. The fact that the problem starts in a symmetrical position, which make it duplex, is also amusing.

3^rd Commendation. Erich Bartel, No. 942. The black king is mated on 4 corners.

4^th Commendation. Peter Harris, No. 848. The combination of 6 fairy conditions with Popeye interpretation caused me a real headache until I understood the legality of each move and finally what was going on here. This is a remarkable problem, but I could not find real artistic value.

5^th Commendation. Michael Grushko, No. 921. Minimal problem in functionary chess. The systematic movements are nice.

6^th Commendation. Erich Bartel, No. 862. 2 AUW.

7^th Commendation. Torsten Linß, No. 878. Another finding by Torsten with cute long selfmate with different fairy pieces.

8^th Commendation. N.Shankar Ram, No. 884. Each one of the 4 Black defenses in the solution prevents 3 out of the 4 mates. This dual avoidance is nice. The Dombrovskis with Chinese pieces is well known but it adds more quality to the final results. However, the duals after the other knight moves reduce significantly the problem’s value.

9^th Commendation. Geoff Foster, No. 905. Cute solutions with rich fairy content in a minimal position.

Commendations without order: Rainer Kuhn & Franz Pachl, No. 871;  Peter Harris, No. 890; Geoff Foster, No. 898; Kostěj Šoulivý, No. 904; Petko A. Petkov, No. 915; Sébastien Luce, No. 954; Ján Kovalič & Ladislav Packa, No. 959.2;
Petko A. Petkov, No. 972: The super pawns features are very limited here, and it is possible to construct almost the same problem without fairy pieces and with black R+B instead. e.g.: White: Bf7 Sd6 Pg6 Kc5 Re5 Rg4 Se3; Black: Sg7 Kh6 Rb4 Sc4 Qa3 Bb3 Rc1. 1.Kd5 Sxd6+ 2.Rc4 Rxc4 3.Sg4+ Rxg4# 1.Kd4 Sxe3+ 2.Bc4 Bxc4 3.Sf7+ Bxf7#. This non-fairy version has some additional content (the tries: 1.Kd5 S~+ 2.Sdc4? and 1.Kd4 S~+ 2.Sec4?).

I want to thank all the participants and apologize if I missed something. There were so many problems, many of them were rich and demanding. On one of them, no. 848, I spent plenty of hours until I could follow the solution and verify that all moves are legal 🙂

And lastly, many thanks to Julia for this amazing website which attracted so many outstanding fairy problems, and to her hard work and dedication to make the problems and the solutions in this hard domain so clear and easy to follow.

Ofer Comay

Tel Aviv
18-10-2016