Our cover problem is a lovely aristocratic 2# by Ottavio Stocchi, published more than 50 years ago. This problem was one of the nuts to be cracked in the solving competition of the autumn meeting of ST, reported on pp. 200-201. The competition was, once again, won by GM Pauli Perkonoja.
The quick composing theme of the meeting required for any kind of problems showing at least two phases. In the first phase, a piece A moves to a square X and piece B to square Y. In the second phase, A moves to Y and B to X. A and B have to be of same colour and type. Not surprisingly, many helpmates were created, but the winning problem was an impressive 3# by Harri Hurme. See the above pages.
On pp. 196-197 we have the award of more-movers published during 2000-2001 in ST. The level was perhaps not as high as it could have been, but nevertheless there are interesting problems worth looking at.
GM Toma Garai entertains us with another of his stories, this time discussing on different obstacles a composer has to deal with, pp. 198-199. There are obviously many traps that a careless composer could easily fall into!
The next pages deal mainly with internal ST matters.
The most important news in this magazine may well be the publication of the RELO list after a break of more than four years. RELO is a Finnish rating system for solvers. The updated list including all solvers with a changed RELO rating since the previous list is on pp. 202-205. In the list, N refers to the number of participations in solving competitions.
Of the competitions since the previous list, the following ones have been taken into account: Finnish Championships 1999-2002, WCSCs 1998-2002 and Open Solving competitions in PCCC meetings of 1998-2002.
It may be of interest to compare the RELO list with the official rating list of PCCC, therefore we publish the ratings of the top 60 solvers from this list on p. 205. A major difference between these two lists is that the time used for solving is taken into account in RELO system.
Our originals column starts on p. 206 and consists of orthodox mates and helpmates. This time there are no studies, selfmates nor fairies.
On pp. 216-218 we can enjoy nine helpmates, all selected from Problemesis and presented by Marko Ylijoki. Problemesis is an excellent problem chess magazine on the web, edited by Christian Poisson. Just in case you don't know the address: http://christian.poisson.free.fr/problemesis.
Problemesis is free of charge, includes recent awards from many sources, composing tourney announcements, an originals column, book reviews, photos etc.
This issue ends with the column Small Is Beautiful, compiled by Henry Tanner. There are altogether 27 problems with various stipulations and ideas.
The first issue of 2003 is due to appear in the beginning of 2003. Happy New Year to all our readers!
Published 11th December 2002