Study of the Month: September, 2017
9/2/2017 – The Ecclesiastes and the famous fictional rabbi Ben Akiba tell us, there is nothing new under the sun, everything has happened before. In a certain way this might hold true to chess — all the ideas might have been shown, but not in that particular setting or not in this particular combination. Looking at our first example, similarities to a previous selection are seen at the end, but the introduction is completely different.
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Nothing new under the sun
The Ukrainian of Armenian descent T. B. Gorgiev (Tigran Borisovich, 1910-1976) created around 250 endgame studies. According to the Italian Wikipedia, which has Giorgio Porreca’s 1971 Dizionario enciclopedico degli scacchi as source, Gorgiev held the titles of “Master of Sports of the USSR” (1959), “International Judge of the FIDE for Chess Composition” (1966) and “International Master of the FIDE for Chess Composition” (1969).
This Gorgiev classic was originally published without the pawn, but found incorrect in 2000 by the mathematician Noam Elkies, as White also could slowly win for example by 1.Ke2. The additional pawn makes the original intention correct, seeing that the endgame without it is not a general win, so White is to move and win here. The pin of the knight on e7 looks dangerous, but Black can play it to c6, so White has to play active to ensure a win.
Sergiy Didukh (*1976) is a Ukrainian chess composer whose influential weblog is in Russian, with translator buttons for English, French, German and Ukrainian. There he held a section for the “Study of the Year 2015”, the officially discontinued project of the World Federation for Chess Composition, which was replaced by this series of articles, in cooperation with ChessBase, to propagate studies to the public by selecting the most suitable examples to present to the general public.
Two months ago we looked at Sergiy Didukh, but did not see a study by him yet. This is something we will do now. The following problem first appeared on the magazine of my beloved late friend Milan Velimirovic (1952–2013) which was handed out in the Belgrade WCCC 2016.
In this study the task is made difficult by Black's strong pawn on g3, even though White can win some material immediately with a battery.
Fritz Giegold, 1903-1978, known as the “Rätselonkel”, put the element of riddle, of enigma above everything else in his compositions. According to the collection by Herbert Engel, Giegold created around 800 problems. He worked mostly in the textile industry.
As an interesting fact, the last reparations for World War I were paid by Germany on 3 October 2010. So can we now ask for the word “Rätselonkel” (= puzzle uncle) to be added to the English language in return, as a payment for this chess battle?
Solutions
You probably know that you can move pieces on our replay boards to analyse, and even start an engine to help you. You can maximize the replayer, auto-play, flip the board and even change the piece style in the bar below the board.
At the bottom of the notation window on the right there are buttons for editing (delete, promote, cut lines, unannotate, undo, redo) save, play out the position against Fritz and even embed the ChessBase game viewer on your web site or blog. Hovering the mouse over any button will show you its function.
World Federation for Chess Composition (www.wfcc.ch)
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Good puzzles, instructive. The last one was particularly clever.
It's not often a chess problem produces a LOL, but it certainly happened here with the Giegold!
What a headache to analyze!
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