The winners of the WFCC Christmas Gallery Contest 2023
Group A
M. Witztum & E. Navon 1. Place CGC 2023/A (133 points)
Živan Šušulić 2. Place CGC 2023-A (125 points)
Andrey Frolkin 3. Place CGC 2023-A (113 points)
Group B
Udo Degener 1. Place CGC 2023-B (114 points)
Jorma Paavilainen 2. Place CGC 2023-B (104.5 points)
Alexey Gasparyan 3. Place CGC 2023-B (103.5 points)
Group C
Zlatko Mihajloski 1. Place CGC 2023-C (124 points)
Janos Koczian 2. Place CGC 2023-C (121 points)
Henry Tanner 3. Place CGC 2023-C (116 points)
Happy New Year 2024 to all friends of chess composition!
There will be many challenges for chess composers, and some of those you may find in the online WFCC Composing Calendar, established at the beginning of this month. It is still in the process of completing, and you can contribute to it by sending links to the announcements and awards to the given address.
The last tournament of 2023 was the friendly WFCC Christmas Gallery Contest, announced on 09.12. In less than 2 weeks it attracted 34 authors from 17 countries, with 43 compositions. They were all published in our Christmas post, and the solutions with comments followed there on 27.12.
Till 29.12 we got 37 awards in Sections: A (14 awards), B (9), and C (14). The suggested system of collective judging worked well thanks to CGC director Kenneth Solja, WFCC webmaster Julia Vysotska and the next 23 judges from 15 countries:
Hauke Reddmann (Section A), Vlaicu Crisan (A&C), Ralf Kraetschmer (C), Andrey Frolkin (B&C), Udo Degener (A), Kenneth Solja (A), Mario Parrinello (B&C), Srećko Radović (B&C), Wilfried Neef (A&C), Mikhail Shalashov (B&C), Aleksandr Feoktistov (A&C), Bela Majoros (B&C), Nikola Petković (A), Janos Csak (C), Živan Šušulić (B), Alexey Gasparyan (A&C), Piotr Gorski (A, B & C), Zlatko Mihajloski (A), Jorma Paavilainen (A&C), Henry Tanner (A&B), Menachem Witztum (C), Brennan Price (A), and Viktoras Paliulionis (A&B).
Altogether, the CGC 2023 engaged 36 contributors (composers + judges) from 19 countries, and inspired 43 Christmas compositions. We hope you will like the winners of all 3 sections published here, as well as many of the remaining entries in the Final placements (PDF).
Dear composers, solvers, judges, organizers, volunteers, and all lovers of chess composition, have a Merry Christmas! For those of you who are not putting aside chess thoughts during winter holidays, we offered a chance to compose, solve, analyze and judge some original helpmates, inspired by different Christmas joys and symbols.
Our friendly Christmas Gallery Contest has attracted not less than 43 entries in less than 2 weeks – hopefully a sign of your good mood!
(27.12.23) Now you can see the solutions in the PDF file.
The next phase will be judging, and you will be the judges, if you want it.
The contest for the most popular compositions will be held in 3 sections, separated according to the length:
We invite everybody to take the roles of judges, by ranking these anonymous entries and marking them. The scales for marking will be from 12 (the best) to 1 inside the Groups A & C, and from 16 (the best) to 1 inside the Group B. The same mark may be given to more than one entry.
All composers who sent their original entries are invited to mark the problems in the group(s) where they didn’t take part!
The marks should be sent by 29th December at latest, to the email address webmaster@wfcc.ch.
As you could see in the WFCC Composing Calendar, this event was announced in Section E, for orthodox helpmates only. The entries D1, D2 & D3 use unorthodox elements and will not take part in the contest, but that will not deprive you from solving and enjoying them here, in the section D.
Latvian Chess Problem Society has the honor to invite all delegates of the World Federation for Chess Composition (WFCC), national teams and individual solvers, chess composers and all those interested in problem chess, to attend the 66. World Congress of Chess Composition and 47. World Chess Solving Championship.
The WCCC venue – Hotel Jūrmala SPA – a 4 star hotel, one of the largest spa hotels in the Baltics. The hotel has a perfect location right in the heart of the resort town Jūrmala – on pedestrian Street Jomas and just a few hundred meters from the golden beach.
Here is a friendly contest for everybody: join the WFCC Xmas Gallery Contest with your original helpmate problems inspired by Christmas!
You may send up to two original helpmates to the Gallery Director Kenneth Solja (kenneth.solja@gmail.com) till 22nd December.
All received problems, with hidden solutions, and without the names of the composers, will be published on 24th December 2023 on the WFCC website. All visitors will have time till 29th December 2023 to send their marks (the system of marking will depend on the number of entries) to the entries that give them the most pleasure and good spirit.
Examples: You may find some examples shaped as Christmas trees in the YACPDB (open database created by Dmitri Turevski). Most of them are marked with the keyword Christmas tree, but some may be found with the keyword Scaccografia, too (together, not more than 20 helpmates). Christmas shapes could be presented in mating positions, too, but they are harder to find.
The first version of the online Composing Calendar has been published on the WFCC website (Competitions -> Composing -> Calendar). It presents the formal tournaments (A-H sections) and the informal ones (I section), in chronological order of their deadlines, with columns reporting possible themes, judges and directors, as well as links to the announcements and awards (when available).
The Calendar contains not only current tournaments, but also those whose deadline has expired (see “All tournaments”). Info about the already closed tournaments will be extended in the future with links to the awards, once they are reported by the involved persons. Some of them you may already see in the Awards column, with the mark “published”.
This draft version will be under construction for a longer time, and will continue with a permanent development. The quality of the Calendar will depend on all interested parties and whoever wants to help.
The work on Calendar started a year ago, with the draft templates created by Ilija Serafimović, and later sent to the delegates. During the Batumi WCCC Kenneth Solja offered to volunteer in contacting the organizers and compiling material. He has largely enriched the content, and has been passionately continuing the same process ever since. During the previous month Julia Vysotska spent many hours organizing and adjusting the content of the excel tables to become a part of the WFCC website. The next steps will depend on the enthusiasm of delegates, organizers, editors, judges, directors, and other individuals.
Please, send your contributions to the Calendar Coordinator Kenneth Solja. The first step will be to compile all possible corrections (names, dates, themes, links …) and all missing info (new tourneys, announcements, awards …). It’s desirable to have texts in English, and instead of pdf documents to send only the adequate links.
The content of the official website of the Batumi WCCC 2023 was removed by the organizer. So, the information published there disappeared. However, thanks to Roland Ott, who has collected all awards of official and unofficial composing tournaments with the help of foreign composers (a special thanks to Jorma Paavilainen!) we have them published in the Batumi page of the MEETINGS section:
Bedrich Formánek passed away on November 19, 2023, at the age of 90. A long-time the President of the Slovak Chess Composition Organization (SOKŠ) and later its Honorary President, a former President of the Permanent Commission for Chess Composition (PCCC) and then the Honorary President of the World Federation for Chess Composition (WFCC), member of the SOKŠ Hall of Fame, chess composer, judge, lecturer, organizer, author of several books on chess composition and its tireless promoter, author of 7,475 chess composition columns in newspapers, chess godfather of many Slovak chess composers, but above all a great person and a good friend. We will certainly return to his work, life and compositions for a very long time.
Bedrich, rest in peace.
Executive Board of the Slovak Chess Composition Organization
30 Member Countries took part in the WFCC online Meeting that was mostly devoted to discussion about the future WFCC events and the host of the 66th WCCC and 47th WCSC 2024.
At the beginning, the FIDE Album Committee spokesman Harry Fougiaxis announced the new title-holders in chess composition:
Grandmaster: Steffen Slumstrup Nielsen (DEN)
International Master: Karen Sumbatyan (RUS)
FIDE Masters: Sergiy Didukh (UKR), Daniel Keith (FRA), Jan Sprenger (GER), Aleksandr Stavrietsky (RUS)
Congratulations!!
These norms were fulfilled according to the results of the Section D (endgames) of the FIDE Album 2019-2021, published on 4th November.
Assembly was informed about the new sentence in the Rules for the World Solving Cup, Point 4, proposed by Roland Ott:
“Organisers should try to avoid holding their tournament on the same weekend as another WSC tournament that has already been published”.
During a short discussion, Neal Turner was against this kind of restriction for the WSC organizers, claiming it has already been rejected in Batumi, and should be rejected again. Other delegates, including Georgy Evseev, Kjell Widlert and Harry Fougiaxis, thought differently, that new formulation isn’t mandatory at all, that it’s only a good reminder. At the end, this additional sentence was accepted.
Marjan Kovačević presented the latest version of Calendar of composing tournaments, prepared and compiled by Kenneth Solja. He urged delegates to contribute to it, in order to complete the final goal, an official WFCC Calendar on the WFCC website.
The main discussion, about the situation in each country, and about the future WFCC events, took a long time and the whole Meeting lasted around two and half hours. The first ones to talk were delegates who presented bids to organize the WCCC & WCSC 2024.
Marcos Roland (the Rio de Janeiro bid) described his attempts to popularize chess composition in Rio and Brasilia trough the series of online lectures and solving competitions. He stressed the problem of presenting helpmates and selfmates to newcomers, and suggested these genres should be omitted in the competitions for beginners – a topic left for future meetings to be discussed.
Harry Fougiaxis, who offered the bid for Rhodes, informed about the Solving Cup to be simultaneously happening in several cities in Greece. He expressed opinion that tradition of ECSC, WCCC and WCSC each year shouldn’t be broken. In order to assure having hosts for ECSC, Harry suggested that some countries from the Central Europe should step forward and say they are ready to organize it. He thinks the suitable location and short weekend program would allow this competition to keep going and attract many participants.
Julia Vysotska explained she wanted to organize in Jurmala a Congress she would like: a kind of summer festival in an enjoyable and friendly atmosphere. Another important reason was to give a chance to young solvers she has been gathering during the last seven years, having in mind a lack of support from local chess federation. For the same reason, she supported organizing ECSC in easy to get destinations in Central Europe.
This long-lasting session was interrupted after speeches of some other delegates, to execute secret voting while all participants were still present. Out of 30 delegates in the Zoom Meeting 21 gave vote to Jurmala, four to Rhodes and three to Rio de Janeiro. One delegate didn’t vote and one was abstained. After adding two more votes sent by email, Jurmala convincingly won straight majority with 23 votes from 32 delegates.
With such a wide support, we will be preparing for a memorable Congress in Latvia, from 27th July to 3rd August 2024!
After the voting some delegates had to leave, while others continued the review by countries.
When it comes to difficulties chess composition faces, many delegates regretted not having better connections with their chess federations. A sense of general agreement was felt in the hopes that FIDE would accept official solving competitions in the context of the World Youth Chess Championship. Although Polish solvers have a relatively good position in their chess federation, Piotr Górski was also insisting on the same goal, as a good way to increase interest of the national chess federations.
Opinions about having both ECSC and WCSC each year were divided, with majority supporting it. As some of the reasons to keep the tradition, Harry Fougiaxis named chances to gain the highest solving norms, and possibility of having 4th solver in the ECSC team.
Marjan Kovačević thought two competitions per year increase organizing and financial burden, while the lack of interested hosts leaves WFCC no real possibility to control the standard of events. He insisted there should be a competition of at least two bids for each event.
Marko Klasinc suggested having WCSC and ECSC every second year, with additional competitions, such as Fairy solving. From his point of view, both competitions had a higher importance at the times before the World Solving Cup where solving norms could be gained now.
Other options to reduce costs of both events were mentioned too. Pavel Kamenik suggested ECSC to be organized simultaneously in several countries, while Dinu-Ioan Nicula strictly opposed this idea, putting under question the regularity of such events. From his side, Dinu-Ioan suggested reducing number of solvers in ECSC teams to three. He gladly announced the strong intention to organize WCCC 2025 in the year of centenary of Romanian chess federation.
17 delegates took part in this review by countries. Many of them shared the same list of difficulties: chess composition societies are getting older and smaller; the numbers of magazines and publications are reducing, and there is no adequate support from chess federations.
For a difference, Bjørn Enemark reported about the first youth solving championship in Dеnmark and continuation of the Thema Danicum magazine in PDF form; Shankar Ram explained Indian chess composers activities in other countries (The Problemist, Julia’s Fairies …);. Yochanan Afek told good news the Variantim has been published in both PDF and paper form, and endgame study has been flourishing in Israel (including Yehuda Hoch coming back after 25 years).
Italian composers are not many but Marco Guida reported they have regular weekly Skype meetings and prepare two magazines in PDF form: Sinfonie Scacchistiche and Best Problems. As Vidmantas Satkus explained, apart from keeping their magazine Šachmatija in both PDF and paper form, Lithuanian solvers have an excellent position. They have a separate sports organization out of the chess federation, with a direct support from their government. Romania is another example of good position in national Sport organization, thanks to personal involvement of Dinu-Ioan Nicula in national chess federation.
This Zoom Meeting was excellently organized by the secretary Mohammad Alhallak. He also replaced the UAE delegate Abdulla Ali Aal Barket in presenting optimistic plans about development of solving in the UAE, in neighboring countries and in the whole Asia.
A reasonably high number of 1015 studies (not counting 13 duplicates) were received. 873 compositions scored at least 4,5 points (86% of the total entries, a very good percentage). 179 studies out of them scored at least 8 points, which represents a good ratio of 20,5% selected compositions. It is a great pity that we present the results with such delay: one of the appointed judges failed repeatedly to meet the schedule requirements, so at the end of September it was decided that another judge should complete the rest of the work (1/3 of the entries). Our compliments to the substitute judge: he managed to finish his part in slightly less than a month!
Many thanks to the director and the judges for their hard and efficient work!
We shall update and issue the overall list of the title points in the coming days.
Update (6.11.2023): A few hours after the results were announced, the director realised that he had accidentally misplaced the PDF file submitted by a composer. The judges reviewed these 8 studies swiftly: 2 of them (joint compositions) are selected in the album! Numbers in the above post and in the page of the results have been properly updated.
