[German] Spaß mit Korolkow

Für die Seite https://schachtraining.de/ habe ich für Elias Pfann ein paar Aufgaben kommentiert. Die erste finden Sie hier:
https://schachtraining.de/spass-studien/

2^666 - The Exponentiation of the Beast!

MATHEMATICA giving us all exponentiations of 2 up until 1000, finding those with the string 666.

power2 = 2^# & /@ Range[0, 1000];
satanic = (! StringFreeQ[#, "666"]) & /@ (ToString /@ power2);
Pick[Range[0, 1000], satanic]

{157, 192, 218, 220, 222, 224, 226, 243, 245, 247, 251, 278, 285, \
286, 287, 312, 355, 361, 366, 382, 384, 390, 394, 411, 434, 443, 478, \
497, 499, 506, 508, 528, 529, 539, 540, 541, 564, 578, 580, 582, 583, \
610, 612, 614, 620, 624, 635, 646, 647, 648, 649, 650, 660, 662, 664, \
666, 667, 669, 671, 684, 686, 693, 700, 702, 704, 714, 718, 720, 723, \
747, 748, 749, 787, 800, 807, 819, 820, 822, 823, 824, 826, 828, 836, \
838, 840, 841, 842, 844, 846, 848, 850, 857, 859, 861, 864, 865, 866, \
867, 868, 869, 871, 873, 875, 882, 884, 894, 898, 920, 922, 924, 925, \
927, 928, 929, 931, 937, 970, 972, 975, 977, 979, 981, 983, 985, 994}

2^{^666}=
3061802069160839023092406500876024752826394864138->666<-225770884719135200\
2289478439035090073805055513810523453685782024507137361403148294216156\
5170086143298589738273508330367307539078392896587187265470464 

Thanks to Hauke Reddmann for the information and code above! I contacted him after seeing that 2^{^800} starts with "666".

WCCC photos (Vilnius 2019)

While Yours Truly did not attend, he wants to share the photos from Vilnius with you. Mikalai Sihnevich has published his photos from August's Vilnius World Congress for Chess Composition on a Google Drive. Note that I do not take any responsibility for anything shown on the photos, this includes giving information about what is shown, or possible content changes of the directory in the future. As of writing this, there are only the photos from Vilnius, i.e. the links are clean.

I also want to remind readers of Branko's Ohrid photos.

Vilnius 2019:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZK1Yn5XwIoJJBSN7_JFA1aKfxUJdWvMx

Ohrid 2018:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1D6KBmJvlMTxHHrQ65Cew4kmYojJlm7wi

Pál Benkö (15.vii.1928 - 25.viii.2019)

One of the greatest advertisers for chess composition among the general public, a world-class grandmaster, the man who has enabled Fischer to win the World Championship 1972 by his withdrawal from the Interzonal in Palma de Mallorca 1970, the never tired writer for ChessBase, Chess Life and I think also sometimes EG, has died on 25 August, according to his wife. Benkö left far over 100 endgame studies and an unknown to me number of other problems.

Only his latest two successes shall be quoted here, as your author never could do justice to Mr. Benkö.

We read on the US Chess Federation website that in August 2018 in Chess Life, Benkö published an article on Stefan Zweig's "Schachnovelle" ("The Royal Game", PDF of the article is linked from the USCF), putting it into a problem form. For the article he received the "Special Achievement" award of the Chess Journalists of America.

His latest chess problem was posthumously published by Susan Polgar. Possibly with this Benkö has set himself a monument to be quoted in books in the future, a puzzle so brilliant that every living master would be proud of it. I have not yet found the solution even though I deduced what the plan and final position should be. The also Hungarian-American master Susan Polgar, also a chess composer herself, showed Benkö's problem:

This is a a Help Mate Composition! From the starting position, White starts the game and checkmates Black by En Passant on the 9th move!
In addition, the game MUST include all the SPECIAL chess moves (at least from one side) such as Pawn Promotion, Castling, En Passant (in addition to the final checkmate), and Discovered Check. There is only one possible solution (according to Benko himself).
He was very proud of this Help Mate Masterpiece and asked me to share it with all of you! This was his final request to me.
Enjoy!

If this is correct, it needs to be reprinted in anthologies! The initial position of the chess game is given, to avoid confusion, i.e. this is a "Shortest Proof Game" or "Proof Game", depending on your point of view.

(Short Story) Parts Failing

In my newest short story, Parts Failing, I explore the implications of "glitches" that people experience that point towards Quantum Immortality or the Mandela Effect being real.

What would happen if you lived a normal life, but one day reality starts breaking apart? Would the ultimate consequence be that reality doesn't exist? Or is reality somewhere else?

Youtube: Studienperlen - erklärt von Exweltmeister Martin Minski

Exweltmeister Martin Minski (Sieger des 8. WCCT 2005-2008 durch eine Gemeinschaftsaufgabe mit Urgestein Gunter Sonntag, siehe Link) kollaboriert nun mit Niclas Huschenbeth, um einige Wochen lang jeweils dienstags auf Youtube in Huschenbeths Serie "Unglaubliche Studien" eine Studie zu präsentieren. Die erste gemeinsame Ausgabe, eine Woche vor der Jubiläumsausgabe "Unglaubliche Studien #50", ist jetzt live.

Ich sehe immer sehr gerne die Huschenbeth'schen Erklärungen an, da der junge Meister immer schön - auch für Partiespieler - ansprechende Aufgaben heraussucht, bei denen "es [...] unglaubliche Ideen [gibt]", wie Huschenbeth selbst im Video anmerkt. Nebenbei erklärt Martin im ersten Co-Video (zu) kurz, wie er Studien baut.

BitChute channel

Because of the "VoxAdpocalypse" on Youtube, led by Carlos Maza, or rather because of the so-called "Hate Speech" rules which I can't agree with, I switch to BitChute now for my video uploads. Until I get banned from Youtube, new videos will still be uploaded there, but also on BitChute, as do the ("legacy") endgame studies videos from Youtube, but not the ones from games, as I want to create a "pure" chess endgame studies channel, including only endgame studies and the "Zatulovskaya Trial" video about her study-like pawn endgame (readers of my free English e-book "Weltenfern" know the endgame and my reworkings).

The channel can be found here, the old videos are added every now and then:
https://www.bitchute.com/channel/kHUv5NUjohvY/

For those who don't have my book yet, or want to share it, the link to my Dropbox is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/12l4tv7pj55itu8/AAAP5aKOGQ_gJt5e_RXoXwCXa?dl=0

Please note that the book is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported license, so you are free to share it on your own website or via other means as long as you make no changes and as long as it is no commercial use. It would be very kind to inform me if you re-upload it somewhere.

Note that information in the book might be partially wrong or inaccurate. See the errata list for the known examples.