2nd FIDE World Cup in Composing 2011

2nd FIDE World Cup in Composing 2011

The International Chess Federation (FIDE), within the framework of its "Chess Composition" special project, is organising the 2nd FIDE World Cup in Composing for 2011 in eight sections. The tournament is coordinated with the WFCC Presidium and is a part of the joint efforts by FIDE and WFCC for the popularization and development of chess composition worldwide.

The tournament sections and judges are as follows:

A. Twomovers – Judge: Vasil Dyachuk (Ukraine)
B. Threemovers – Judge: Valery Shavyrin (Russian Federation)
C. Moremovers – Judge: Yakov Vladimirov (Russian Federation)
D. Endgame studies – Judge: Yuri Akobia (Georgia)
E. Helpmates – Judge: Živko Janevski (Macedonia)
F. Selfmates – Judge: Yuri Gordian (Ukraine)
G. Fairies – Judge: Krasimir Gandev (Bulgaria)
H. Retros and Proofgames – Judge: Hans Gruber (Germany)

In each section, only one composition by each author is acceptable and joint compositions are not allowed.

The theme is free in all sections, and any number of moves is acceptable in the h# and s# sections. In the fairies section, only computer-tested problems by one of the Alybadix, Popeye or WinChloe programs are allowed; the participants should state with which software they tested their composition.

The Director of the tournament is IGM Petko A. Petkov (FIDE international judge), who will not participate as author or judge in the tournament.

Entries must be sent by e-mail only to the Director's address at

ppetkow@mail.orbitel.bg

Participants should mention their postal address in the e-mail.

The closing date is May 1st, 2011.

The Director will send all compositions to the judges on standardised anonymous diagrams by May 15th, 2011. All judges should prepare their awards by July 15th, 2011.

The results will be published on the Internet by August 1st, 2011 and they will be declared final after two months allowed for claims of anticipation and unsoundness.

In each section, cups, prizes, honourable mentions and commendations will be awarded, as well as certificates for the prizes signed by the President of the FIDE Mr Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.

All participants will receive a copy of the booklet with the final awards.

Puzzles (1)

Besides the chess compositions (the chess problems), there are many chess puzzles, that use chessboards and chessmen, but their subject is basically mathematic.
The chessmen have various abilities, thus we can "play" with various positionings or moves of the pieces.

Let us see some puzzles, easy enough.
I expect solutions like [Puzzle_x, solution / solutions].
On the internet the solutions surely exist. You do not need to search there.
What I ask from you is to face the challenge by yourself and discover one solution. If you like, find how many distinct (not by turning the chessboard, not mirror positions) solutions exist for this puzzle.

P001 : How many, at most, white rooks can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P002 : How many, at most, white queens can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P003 : How many, at most, white knights can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P004 : On a chessboard we see many squares, of various sizes (1x1, 2x2, 3x3, ..., 8x8), with sides parralel with the sides of the chessboard. How many are they?

---

Answers

My thanks to the reader HeinzK (see his blog) who sent a comment.

Puzzle_001 : How many, at most, white rooks can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P001 P001a

We can place, easily, 8 rooks. The obvious solution is to place them on one main diagonal (See P001). We could also place them differently, having each rook guard a line and a file (See P001a). If we accept that the firs rook can be placed on one square of the first file, then the second rook can occupy one of seven squares in the second file, etc, until the eighth rook can be placed on one free square of the eighth file. Totally there are 8*7*6*5*4*3*2*1 positions, (in mathematics this product is named [8 factorial] and is denoted by [8!]), so we have 8!=40320 positions. The Greek friend Carlo DeGrandi informs us that the problem was described first by the English mathematician Ernest Dudeney (1857-1930), who has also invented the crossing of words into crosswords.

Puzzle_002 : How many, at most, white queens can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P002

We can place, with a little difficulty, 8 queens. The king of the puzzles, (there is a book "The Puzzle King" with his chess puzzles, by Sid Pickard), the American Sam Loyd has published in the American Chess Journal in February 1877 the position you see in P002, (stretching the fact that whichever the solution, with rotation or mirroring we will have a queen on d1). This is an old problem, (a comment by Kevin notes that it was first proposed by Max Bezzel, in Die Schachzeitung, 1848), it was published in 1848 in the German chess magazine "Illustrierte Scachzeitung" (=Illustrated Chess newspaper) as follow-up on a question by the philologist professor Dr. A. Nauck, who also proposed to Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) this problem. Nauck has published in 1850 a solution (mirror image of the solution by Loyd) while the mathematician Gauss has found 12 basic solutions. (See here). This type of problem is very popular to the students of informatics.

Puzzle_003 : How many, at most, white knights can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P003a P003b P003c

The answer is very easy : 32. We place 32 knights on the white squares of the chessboard and they all "threat" the black squares. Alternatively, we could place them all on black squares. Thus, we have two solutions. With a modified formulation Puzzle_3a : "How many, at least, white knights can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?", we see an easy answer (figure P003a) which uses 24 knights, an one more economic with 16 knights (figure P003b). Modifying again the formulation Puzzle_3b : "How many, at least, white knights can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all non-occupied squares?", (meaning that some occupied squares could be guarded), we find that the best solution (figure P003c) uses only 12 knights!

Puzzle_004 : On a chessboard we see many squares, of various sizes (1x1, 2x2, 3x3, ..., 8x8), with sides parralel with the sides of the chessboard. How many are they?
P004	On figure P004 we see numbers inside the squares of the chessboard. This number is the multitude of various-sized squares formed with this square as the upper-left-corner. Adding these multitudes (as shown in the margin) we have total = 1x8 + (2x7+1x7) + (3x6+2x6) + (4x5+3x5) + (5x4+4x4) + (6x3+5x3) + (7x2+6x2) + (8x1+7x1) = 8 + 21 + 30 + 35 + 36 + 33 + 26 + 15 = 204 squares.

7th EUROPEAN CHESS SOLVING CHAMPIONSHIP

The Seventh European Chess Solving Championship (ECSC) for 2011 will take place in Lowicz, Poland, from Friday April 1st thru Sunday April 3rd 2011.

The official site with every information needed (invitation, program, registration up to March 20th 2011, participants, κλπ.) is here.

(There are three problems in this page for warm up.
In the three-mover by Loyd see the white queen, with what impetus goes from g2 to h1!)

John Nunn at the top

It is well known fact that John Nunn is a great achiever in various fields, mathematician, astronomer, OTB chess player, chess problem solver, book author...

These days John Nunn is British Problem Solving Champion and European Problem Solving Champion and World Problem Solving Champion. This is an astonishing feat.

Read more in the article of Chessbase : John Nunn's problem grand slam and the solutions of some problems here and here.