This issue appears later than planned, apologies for the delay!
Our cover problem is by Kauko Väisänen, who turned 75 in June 13,
2008. Kauko is active both as a player and as a problemist. He has composed
a lot of solver-friendly problems with elegant positions and clever solutions,
not lacking thematic substance. Congratulations to Kauko and to other jubilees,
celebrating their anniversaries in 2008, see p. 79.
The first pages of this issue are devoted to the European Championship of Solving.
The competition was held in Antalya, Turkey, in March-April. The event was a
success, mainly due to effective organisation and the work of GM Milan Velimirovic,
in charge of the solving competitions. Previous European Championships were
weekend events but Antalya was of a different kind, including many composing
competitions and lectures of high class.
The Finnish success in Antalya was moderate, as was perhaps to be expected.
Terho Marlo did well in solving and Harri Hurme in composing. Regarding the
latter, there was some controversy about the effort by another composer to improve
Harri´s winning problem after the award was published in the noticeboard.
The proposed improvement was eventually published in the final bulletin, though
this was not something which Harri had agreed to.
The spring meeting of our society took place in early May, including various
activities more or less related with chess problems. The composing theme was
anticipatory unpin and the winner was Henry Tanner with a h#3. Henry became
interested in this theme and carried out a survey on it, using the valuable
WinChloe database. He concentrated on h#3´s and the results are available
on pp. 62-67.
There are questions, and then there are good questions, which are difficult
to answer. A classical good question is "what is fairy chess?" There
seems not to be a simple, clear-cut explanation of fairy chess. Per Olin is
interested in this question and makes an interesting proposal to add another
group of problems: other kind of orthodox problems. Per writes that nowadays
stalemate problems, for example, are classified as fairy chess problems, although
there are no good reasons for this. See pp. 68-69.
On the next pages Harri Hurme tells a story of an attempt to compose to the
current WCCT study section. Pauli Perkonoja and Harri Hurme worked hard to realise
a challenging idea, but the final result was not quite up to their expectations.
Still, the study is worth publishing as you can see from pp. 70-71.
On p. 71 we have the Paha Pähkinä (A Hard Nut To Crack), selected
as always by Neal Turner. This time there is a 2# - difficult or not, that is
the question!
The originals columns start from p. 72. Please, keep our original editors busy
by sending them your originals! The next ST is due to appear in autumn.
Published 15th July 2008