Warning against Europa Rochade

We must warn against the Europa Rochade, as it violates the codex of chess compositions, article 21 on pages 59 and 65 of the March 2015 issue by not naming the sources of the problems and studies presented.


UPDATE, 1 May 2015: The Europa Rochade now shows author's names everywhere, so that is enough of a win for us.

An idea for the first 100 Mars colonists

Since Mars is a different world, you can have your own world chess champions. Do it! :-)

Study of the Year 2013

An expert gremium has selected the "Study of the Year 2013", which is not the best study of the year but the best one to promote chess composition to a general public. Last night Dr. Harold van der Heijden (Netherlands) has sent the e-mail (the small error in the linking was there in the original mail but the link itself works):

Dear all,

The Study of the Year 2013 has been selected!

The marvellous study of Pavel Arestov can be downloaded here:

www.arves.org/PDF-Awards/The%20Study%20of%20the%20Year%202013%20-%20study.pdf

www.arves.org/PGN-Awards/SOY%202013%20Arestov.pgn

Every year we select a Study of the Year to popularize endgame studies among the general chess public. Therefore I ask you to publish it in your magazine or on your website. Please also refer to: www.arves.org/English/index.htm

Further details (report, all studies submitted, and the scores of the judges) can be found here:

www.arves.org/English/StudyOfTheYear2013.htm

www.arves.org/PDF-Awards/SOY%202013.pdf

www.arves.org/PGN-Awards/SOY%202013.pgn

Best wishes,

Harold van der Heijden

Spokesman of the endgame study subcommittee of the WFCC

 For the convenience of the reader, the study is reproduced here.

Pavel Arestov

Jenever tourney 2013, prize

White to move and draw

1.d7 Ke5! 2.Sd3+! Ke4! 3.Sf2+!! B:f2 4.d8Q Sd4+

5.Kc5!!, and:

5.-Se6+ 6.Kd6 S:d8 stalemate (left diagram)

5.-Rh5+! 6.Kb6!!/i Se6+ 7.Ka6 S:d8 stalemate (right diagram)

i - 6.Kc4? Rc5+! 7.K:c5 reaches the position after the fifth move, but without the Rh7. Now 7.-Se6+ 8.Kd6 S:d8 wins since the king can enter the seventh rank. This is known among experts as the "WCCT 7 theme" since it was required for White in that tourney that ran from 2001 to 2004.

         

Left: Stalemate after 5.-Se6+

Right: Stalemate after 5.-Rh5+

Odds and Ends

When I grew up, success used to be something meaningful, something like a big medical discovery, a cure for pox, a political breakthrough, signing the START papers, a big scientific thing, the first man on the moon.

Nowadays it is having nuclear war averted for one more day...

The explosion at Donetsk on 8 February 2015 should be a wake-up call. How easy would it have been to mistake it for a nuclear explosion, just as some onlookers did!
I have played through many nuclear retaliation scenarios in my head, and all except one resulted in a nuclear holocaust. Usually Russia would score a short term victory thanks to the superior MARV technology where the MIRV of the western allies such as the United States would have trouble penetrating. In the end, however it would come down to the post-war effects which would be disastrous. If humanity was to survive, then we would still have a large scale catastrophe similar to an extinction event.

The one scenario that DID end well included a single nuclear missile shot by the western allies onto unoccupied Russian territory that would be let through, explodes with minor casualties, as a warning. It would include a high risk by Russia - after all, who knows that the missile does not change its course in the end - and a highly increased threat of a nuclear holocaust for the next between 1 to 2 and 5 to 20 years, equaling a Doomsday Clock set to between 0.30 and 1.30 minutes.

Humanity is at a turning point. Either it survives the nuclear age united, which would mean that finally people understand there is a lot more to lose than to gain, or it falls divided. There might be an alternative, but I fail to see it. Maybe humanity can survive divided, but at some point the climate change, the outer threats by asteroids, will not leave any other choice than to unite. The threat comes from humanity itself, but also from other places, those beyond control, those where a divided humanity no matter with what good intentions might not be enough to survive... or to avert its extinction for one more day.

Afek 64 Jubilee Tourney (31.1.2016)

The Israeli chess composition society (ICCS) announces an endgame study tourney to celebrate the 64th birthday, on 16 April 2016, of the composer and promoter of the art of the endgame study Yochanan Afek.

Theme: free

Maximum 2 entries per composer; Joint compositions are allowed.

Closing date: 31/1/2016

The award will be published in "Variantim" in mid-2016.

Total prize fund: 1400 US$. 5 money prizes: 400$, 300, 250, 200, 100 and additional 150$ value in books prizes.

Judge: Yochanan Afek.

Tourney director: Amatzia Avni

Send your original studies (diagram, detailed solutions and postal address) by e-mail (avniam@zahav.net.il) or by post (Amatzia Avni, 9 Oranim, Givaat-Shmuel 54052, Israel). Studies sent by e-mail should be in Word or PDF; an additional attached pgn file would be appreciated.

Please reprint!

Estj task babsona!?

We would like to direct attention to a beautiful Russian article by Vladimir Tyapkin on the early AUW and Babson problems:
http://ru-chess-art.livejournal.com/35856.html

On humor, or why we all are Charlie

The terroristic attacks of two fanatic young man who killed two policemen and 10 members and visitors of the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the "weekly Charlie", on 7 January 2015 in Paris have seen manifold reactions. I have sent an e-mail of my support to the three French composers I cooperated with, but I also feel it is time for a personal reaction, a defense for the work of the heroes of the pen that have been slaughtered by infidels - and you can not call "islamic" terrorists anything else whose first act of "avenging the prophet" is killing a 42 year old muslim (and another policeman). If their religion is true, they can be sure that Allah will send them to hell for this act, no matter what else they did on that day or on the rest of their life. The Quran that I have read does not say "Make sure to kill some muslim to avenge the prophet. Also Allah is either not almighty because otherwise I would just give people I want to kill a heart attack or a bad judge because I don't kill people that you think insult me or my prophet. So please play the almighty judge that Allah is not."

Wait, your Quran also does not say that? Makes you wonder if there is a special Quran version for terrorists, just like the Jehovah's witnesses make their own version of the Bible.

So yes, let us start with humor in the wake of the unspeakable. If I see the caricature of R.L. Oppenheimer where a plane is seen flying into one of two tall pens clearly resembling the terroristic attacks of 11 September 2001 I do not think that the writer disrespects any of the victims of that attack, but that he rather takes the symbolism behind those pictures, behind those attacks. He takes the unspeakable, the attack against the freedom of speech, and blends it with the back then unspeakable, the attack on freedom. This picture symbolises perfectly what happened on the attacks while simply putting the death toll aside, making it "just 12 more victims of an endless war" and showing instead the essence of the attacks, the truth that is so cruel that humor is the only weapon against it.

There was a famous joke in the 1930s in Stalin's Russia: A jewish businessman falls into a river in a big Russian city and two guards (policemen maybe) come by. He cries for help, but the guards don't react. So he starts screaming "Down with Stalin!" and the guards jump into the river and help him out.

This joke was as much resembling its time as Oppenheimer's caricature resembles our time. It took the unspeakable, the pogroms that went on in Russia - in hindsight you could not even replace it with nazi Germany because of the different mentality of genocide - and it took the essence of all the things that were wrong into one construct: Antisemitism, the twisted Russian values of that time, and the Führerkult around Stalin. Does this joke disrespect jews? Hardly so, since it is jewish, it is the very essence of jewish humor. In the light of unspeakable pain and suffering, when nothing else remains, the joke, the humor, still is there, even if it comes in the form of a dark cynism. In a world of hate, it is the only weapon that helps to cope with life, the only means of self-expression, of just for one moment feeling a small bit of joy inside.

Coming back to the present time, David Pope's caricature which is quoted on the page linked above shows a subtle sense of humor, assuming but not requiring the knowledge of the phrase that the pen is mightier than the sword. Behind the punchline - "He drew first!", a pun on unholstering a weapon as well as drawing a picture - the bigger question is asked to society: Is the pen also mightier than the Kalashnikov? Will the free world react to terrorism by self-censorship, or will it just now, as a reaction, take out the caricatures that it did not dare to show? Will the terrorists in the end have gotten what they wanted, or will they get the exact opposite? Does the caricaturist deserve to die from the terrorist, or is the terrorist unjustified in his means, is he someone who broke the moral event horizon as Oppenheimer's caricature would imply? These are the questions hidden under Pope's punchline, the seemingly obvious joke turns into a deeply philosophical, an even religious discussion about the meaning of freedom, life and humor.

Let us not lose the respect that Albert Uderzo shows to the staff of Charlie Hebdo, but also to caricaturists, to the free press, worldwide by having his two most known heroes bow down in an act of reverence, transcending the border between history and reality, between humor and tragic, between the essence of life and death. But let us also show the finger to terrorism, to the people who think that they can win against the pen while they already have lost this war. That is, unless now society decides to commit self-censorship, unless we decide to lose! Just as you can not suppress humanity forever, you also can not suppress humor!

In the end, I can only repeat the words of Tim Wolff of the German satirical magazine "Titanic": Es lebe der Witz! Or, as our French friends would express it: Le humour est mort, vive le humour!