An idea and its variation

 EG 225 offers to me two ideas and their variations. One is mentioned in the magazine's supplement, the other is one I only knew, as I had tried to make something off of it.

Siegfried Hornecker, Original (omposed 27 October 2004)

White to move and win

The solution 1.d:e8R! Qg8+ 2.Kh3 Q:e8 3.B:f5 Qe7 4.Rd7! Qg7 5.R:g7 wins with the d-pawn advancing if the queen remains on e7 and f7 lacks a proper introduction and is overall ugly, but the basic idea was nice. Nothing ever came of it, however.

 

The next year, this study was composed and published (abridged):

 

Siegfried Hornecker, Schach 12/2005

White to move and win

The first few moves were left out here, as they are just a horrible introduction with captures that should have been left out in the first place. 5.Be8! Rf7! 6.Kg3!! Rf8 7.f7 R:f7 8.d6 Rf8 9.d7 R:e8 10.d:e8R! wins

 

Using this matrix and the previous position's idea, some time around 2020 I arrived at something like this - no trace is left in the database, as I found nothing that works.

 

 

Siegfried Hornecker (modified), around 2020 (reconstruction)

Black to move, White wins

 

Only while writing this blog post, I arrived at the pawn pair e3/e4 to make the matrix work. Removing those, it was intended to be some kind of zugzwang. Black should have no square for the queen on the diagonal, so after 1.-Qf5+ 2.R:f5 mate but at the time I found no working setting, and the one I found now is more ugly than good.

I was surprised to find a similar position on the front page of EG 225, and remembering my idea within a second I arrived at the conclusion that 1.Rf7 must be the key there.

Yochanan Afek & Amatzia Avni, 2nd FRME tt 2020, prize

White to move and win (end of study)

Obviously it was not, they had found a completely different idea than what I sought, and must have found it a few months prior to me trying the similar setting.

Yochanan Afek & Amatzia Avni, 2nd FRME tt 2020, prize

White to move and win

 

The solution runs 1.Bg4+! K:g4 2.Sg6 S:a7 3.R:a7 Kh5 4.Kh3 K:g6 5.Se5+ Kh5 and the diagram above is reached: 6.Sg6!! K:g6 7.h5+ K:h5 8.R:h7 wins, or 6.-Q:g6 7.Ra5+ Qg5 8.h:g5 wins

 

There is nothing new under the sun when I try to compose, and sometimes a masterpiece is just one piece moved to another position away. And getting to that position two years earlier.

 

Congratulations to Yochanan and Amatzia for the incredible finding and the interesting introduction with Anzizielelement (the king leaving h5 first).