The 41st World Chess Solving Championship took place during the second week in August in Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony. The solving event has been running since 1977 and is a well-established part of the annual World Congress of Chess Competition. Recently it has been utterly dominated by Poland, who have won every year since 2009. We reported on this year’s event two weeks ago. Today we bring you the solutions to the last four problems given there.
The second day of the Championship began with the helpmate round. In a helpmate, both sides are cooperating to help White mate Black (although the moves still have to be legal). Black moves first, with White mating Black on his third move, so the sequence of moves goes B W B W B W mates. There are two parts to this problem, as given below.
The second part is the same problem with the black queen on c6 and not c5:
The moremover round proved my downfall, since I failed to solve a fairly straightforward mate in 8, and this allowed Kacper Piorun to take over the leading position by scoring full marks. Here’s a neat mate in 4 which shouldn’t prove too challenging.
Here's the final selfmate in two, not too hard but with a few traps to be avoided. In a selfmate, White is trying to commit suicide by forcing Black to mate him. Black is doing his best to avoid mating White. White plays first, and must force Black to give mate on his second move.
So Kacper Piorun retained his world championship title, which he has now won four years in a row. Second place went to Lithuanian Martynas Limontas, while Marko Filipovic from Croatia finished third (Limontas, Piorun, Filipovic above). I ended up in fourth place, just half a point behind Filipovic.
(L-to-R) Martynas Limontas, Kacper Piorun, Marko Filipovic | Photo: Franziska Iseli
Senior section: Jonathan Mestel (2nd), John Nunn (1st) and Michel Caillaud (3rd) | Photo: Franziska Iseli
In response to readers’ comments regarding dress standards in the problem world, here’s proof that not all is lost — photo of Martin Minski, German study composer | Photo: Franziska Iseli
You can also download a PGN of the selected problems without solutions but with pointers by John Nunn to help you solve them, e.g. with ChessBase or a Fritz-compatible program.
John Nunn is a director of Gambit Publications, a leading chess book publisher. They have some interesting new books out this year.
In his day, Lajos Portisch was known for his meticulous opening preparation and in this book he opens his files and shows how key ideas in the Ruy Lopez have evolved from the 1960s to the current era. See GambitBooks.com for more information.
Yochanan Afek, a Grandmaster of Composition and an over-the-board International Master, explores the world of extreme chess tactics, using a host of entertaining examples from over-the-board play and the world of endgame studies. See this page for more information.
These two Gambit books are available in print, Kindle and app form. Using the app, which is available for iOS and Android devices, you can play over all the moves on-screen.
