Friday, July 30, 2010

Local : Meeting of composers (7)

Alkinoos's note : I do not translate here all the posts from my original blog (kallitexniko-skaki in Greek language). Those posts containing local news only, not problems, are omitted. As an exception today, I give you the seventh meeting of the Greek problemists and a funny moment in the adventure of composition.

The seventh meeting of problemists was scheduled for Friday's evening 30/07/2010.
Mr Manolas Emmanuel was the host, welcoming in his home the company of Themis Argyrakopoulos, Ioaennis Garoufalidis, Panagis Sklavounos, Harry Fougiaxis.
We spoke about some of the problems which were submitted to the composition contest (JT Manolas-60) that ended July 12.
We examined the abilities of the special available software (WinChloe, Fancy+Popay) to represent and analyze these problems.

I relay to you a funny moment in this meeting. Using one of the programs, I put on a chessboard various fairy and normal pieces at random, creating the following position:
(Problem 469)
Manolas Emmanuel
original

h#4

The piece on c5 is an Imitator. After each move of a white or black normal piece, the Imitator makes its move similar in direction and distance. If the Imitator finds an obstacle in its move or goes out of the board, then the move of the normal piece is illegal.

One of the composers asked "What else is needed?" and I said "A Stipulation. I will put Helpmate in 4 moves".
You can imagine the surprise and laughter when program WinChloe examined it and found one solution only!!
Total time for composition : under half a minute!

1.Kf7[Imb6] Kh7[Imb5]
2.Kf8[Imb6] Kg6[Ima5]
3.Kg8[Imb5] Sc1[Imd4]
4.Kh8[Ime4] Kh7[Imf5]# (The white King boldly attacks. The black King can not capture the wK, because the Imitator trying to make the similar move is stopped by the Pawn).

After the conversations, we had a nice dinner in a friendly nearby delicacy-restaurant of Nea Smirni.

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