Announcement: 8th FIDE World Cup in Composing

https://fide.com/news/464
https://fide.com/calendar/50617

Composers will be surely pleased to know that the used time controls for composing are "Standard". Due to technical limitations, composers will need to self-regulate this to make sure they don't use "Blitz" or "Correspondence" time controls for composing. Or the dreaded "My wife wants me to stop composing but I only need five more minutes" time controls.

Development of a Sabra Tourney helpmate

The 20th Sabra Tourney called for the opening and closing of a line by a black piece. I have come up with a simple idea, and after sending it to Paz Einat, I found that I can have two variations with a small change, so I also sent him the new position.

Siegfried Hornecker

Original for 20th Sabra Tourney

(Original publication)

Helpmate in 2, 2 solutions

1.Bd5 Qh7 2.0-0-0 Qc7 mate

1.Bd3 Qh1 2.0-0-0 Q:b7 mate

This small idea has the flaw of Black castling both times to the same side, and Paz decided to work on it. After an earlier unthematic version, he presented a final result, which he sent as original to the judge.

Paz Einat & Siegfried Hornecker

20th Sabra Tourney 2017, 4th prize

Helpmate in 2

a) Diagram above

b) Diagram below

a) 1.S4g5 R:h4 2.0-0 B:h7 mate

b) 1.S4c5 B:f3 2.0-0-0 B:b7 mate

Pinning the white queen prevented many unwanted solutions, but there is unfortunately a lot of material necessary to ensure the correctness. However, the helpmate shows both castlings, and this was pretty difficult to develop. So of course the bottle of Sabra we won went to Paz, as he did most of the work! But - hopefully we will see it in the FIDE Album! And what better celebration of the friendship of our countries Israel and Germany?


Addendum, 14 August 2017: The complete award is now available on the Variantim website:
http://www.variantim.org/20th%20Sabra%20Tourney%20award.pdf 

A helpmate by me, recently published

Siegfried Hornecker

Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, 10 June 2016

Helpmate in 3, two solutions

Enjoy! I hope it's not anticipated.