Tata Steel studies solutions – Part two

Tata Steel-75 AT 2013: Provisional Awards

By Yochanan Afek

Tata Steel Tournament, arguably the most prestigious contemporary chess event celebrated its 75th edition this year, and among other festivities a special composing tourney was announced by its organizing committee with a generous prize fund. I was expecting a great happening and indeed my colleague composers did live to the expectations in regards to both quantity and quality. I am grateful to each and every one of them for their much appreciated efforts.

Israeli IM and problem expert Yochanan Afek

I received 89 entries from our devoted tournament director Harold van der Heijden in anonymous files (one with the full solutions and another one with just the artistic lines) as well as a detailed report specifying correctness and originality of all entries. The general standard was one of the highest I have witnessed for years and decision making turned to be a rather tough job.

As we are celebrating an over-the-board major event I tried to pay a special attention to human and player friendly entries. I sincerely hope that the following selection would achieve this aim. It certainly is a combative one with a clear majority of winning studies over the more peaceful ones notably among the prize winners.

The studies – part two

In view of the high standard of the submissions I decided to award three special prizes to the following remarkable studies. All three of them might well have won the top honours in any other event and their only "drawback" is that while being definitely judge-friendly perhaps they are not player-friendly enough…

1st Special Prize: Sergiy Didukh (Ukraine)
An original battle of the heavy artillery, inspired by the game Ding-Szczepowski played in Istanbul Olympiad last year, displays strong systematic and logical elements. The construction is surprisingly almost aristocratic.

2nd special Prize: David Blundell (Great Britain)
The general concept of a knight challenging the bishop's umbrella to access a cornered king has already been dealt with as the composer himself pointed out (by Krug, Elkies and Petren). The present version nonetheless displays fresh elements and introduces a strong thematic try.

3rd Special Prize: Richard Becker (USA)
White repeats the same queen manoeuvre time and again until Black runs out of waiting pawn moves and is eventually forced to block a crucial line. This familiar concept is presented here with remarkable economy and utmost aesthetics.

1st Hon. Mention: Oleg Pervakov (Russia)
Rich battery play with a fashionable logical element of avoiding capture emphasized by a thematic try.

2nd Hon. Mention: Nikolay Kralin & Yuri Shvyrkov (Russia)
A natural and lively Rook scene ending up in a stalemate following an underpromotion.

– Part three to follow soon –

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