Halldór Ásgrímsson (8.ix.1947 - 18.v.2015)

We have seen news that Halldór Ásgrímsson has died. He was prime minister of Iceland when it granted refuge to my childhood hero Bobby Fischer in March 2005 from the United States. No three years later, on January 17, 2008, Bobby Fischer died at the symbolic age of 64.

There is an interesting historic article on the Icelandic politics of that time on grapevine.is, an online magazine from Iceland's capital Reykjavik.

(We believe that as of writing this blog post en-Wikipedia's date of 19.v.2015 is incorrect, de-Wikipedia gives 18.v.2015 with the source Iceland Review Online.)

Congratulations to the Klarsfeld couple!

We would like to congratulate our almost president Beate Klarsfeld and her husband Serge Klarsfeld for receiving the Bundesverdienstkreuz, the highest civil honor of Germany. (The both links are to de-Wikipedia, en-wikipedia has an article on them as a couple.)

Beate Klarsfeld is a famous nazi hunter, most well known are her contributions to the capture of war criminal Klaus Barbie as well as her controversial bitchslap against alleged nazi criminal Kurt Georg Kiesinger while he was chancellor of Germany in 1968.

Europa Rochade commendation. ŠAH-MAT still infringing

While we do not want in any way to endorse the magazine, our journalistic principles necessitate, after we had warned earlier, now to commend the Europa Rochade for acknowledging the composers of chess problems and studies now, thereby being mostly in accordance with the Codex for Chess Composition. This can be seen for fellow composers as an example that they should complain at such magazines.

Indeed, we would like to see the same kind of e-mail sent against the magazine ŠAH-MAT as we sent against the Europa Rochade. Unfortunately we have a language barrier there.

Milan Velimirović 64 Memorial Tourney (announcement)

 Milan Velimirović 64 Memorial Tourney (21.04.2015 – 21.04.2016) 

The Serbian Problem Chess Society announces Memorial tourney devoted to Grandmaster Milan Velimirović. There will be three sections in Milan’s favourite thematic fields: direct #2 and #3, without fairy elements. 

A) Single-phase #2

Judge: Barry Barnes (Great Britain).

B) Multi-phase #2 with cyclic combination named Velimirović Attack

Judge: Touw Hian Bwee (Indonesia).

C) #3 – free theme

Judge: Hans-Peter Rehm (Germany). 

With the selection of sections and judges, whose work and friendship Milan especially admired, we tried to remain faithful to his unique spirit. 

Group A covers the field Milan loved and suggested in his concept of the 7th WCCT theme, believing it would give composers many hours of pleasure. 

Group B is devoted to one of Milan’s favourite cyclic invention. Contrary to group A, it will be a real challenge for composers to compete with the small number of existing examples, all composed by Milan himself. The definition and the name of the theme were suggested by him, in the article published in Mat Plus Review Summer 2008”, pages 100-103: 

“In tries White self-invalidates two out of three thematic elements, which are almost inevitably white lines. Each try provides compensation for one invalidation so that black can utilize only the remaining one to reject the try. In this way all thematic tries contain two degrees of attack, i.e. each one is at the same time a correction and an error to be corrected.” 

Link: http://matplus.net/pub/VelimirovicAttack.pdf 

Group C represents the field where Milan produced some of his best known masterpieces. It is not devoted to cyclic concepts only, because Milan loved all kinds of attractive chess ideas. 

The closing date, April 21st 2016 will mark Milan’s 64th birthday – the milestone he found to be the most appropriate one for a chess player or composer. 

The method of entering originals for the tourney directly to the Mat Plus website (with automatic confirmation) was created by Milan (click “Originals” on the main Mat Plus Menu on the left side). It is one of his numerous sophisticated tools for the benefit of chess composition. Composers unable to use it may send their entries by e-mail to the Mat Plus administrator: borislav.gadjanski@gmail.com.

PLEASE REPRINT!

 http://matplus.net/pub/MilanVelimirovic_64_MT.pdf

Nur die Besten sterben Junge

Yesterday or today, 70 years ago, one of the greatest German chess players of all time fell in the last days of the madness brought upon Germany and the world by the nazi regime, the World War II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Klaus_Junge&oldid=641422473

If Germany ever could have had a world champion after Lasker again, Junge would have without a doubt been a contestant.

His gravestone can be seen here:
http://www.kwabc.org/archive/Home/graeber_02.htm

Just a thought

Where there is no hard evidence, only what history wants to remember will ultimately be considered the truth.

WCCT 10 Announcement

The WCCT 10 has been announced in memorial of the late Uri Avner. The announcement is available on the website of the WFCC:
http://www.wfcc.ch/10th-wcct-announcement/
http://www.wfcc.ch/competitions/composing/10-wcct/

Yours Truly hopes to be able to participate again. An article on section D will be written for eg with several more studies.

The themes unfortunately can't be copied easily without breaking their markup, resulting in ugly empty lines and other issues. For the full announcement, including regulations and examples, please visit the website given above and download/open the PDF document.