june 9 2015

greffier's word

Master, in his castle in Cannes, was still in good shape for this new cybernetic session.

A few technical problems occurred during this 21st century course, mainly due to the duration (!!) of the course.

Indeed, every 3 hours, a break forced the Master to regenerate a new meeting id.

Pierre, who is now a regular of this kind of course, joined Daniel and me to reinforce the audience.

Master's words

As the European Championship has been widely covered, we will settle for a selection of 6 problems from the open, which are much easier. Only the 3# and the 2# helpmate will make you think a bit.

The practical endgame and the study each have a ZZ. But in the game played, it is strangely... at the moment the game stops. The result is that Black had an extra opportunity to save himself, unnoticed by the Romanian expert, by getting the same position earlier, but with the changed move. On the other hand, in the study, the ZZ represents only a tiny part of its wealth, as it only serves to force a black pawn to drop a square, whereas by

elsewhere, it will be necessary to manoeuvre 9 moves to remake the same check, but with another black pawn disappeared from the chessboard. When we look at the soporific games of the super-tournaments of the news, and we savour the beauty of this study and this endgame, there is no match.

The game of the day pitted the 'French Shirov' against the 'Latvian Lautier', at least if we are to believe a plumitif of a French magazine, a magazine which at the time still enjoyed a certain notoriety. This writer was, nolens volens, the source of the outpouring of energy that was deployed there. I couldn't resist the pleasure of putting the same opponents back into play, for (at least) one such... hot extract. In both cases, the game "should not" have been lost by our compatriot. But it was.

The fairy session is devoted to problems which do not pass, or pass very badly, in "chess base" notation, royal coitus in madrasi or Mars circe, in particular, not being much appreciated. Our master clerk, who has become a master tamer of this kind of beasts, will make all this more... human, or at least more animal, in the good sense of the term!

Finally, an easy and amusing Anglo-Bosnian 6# helpmate, seen a few days ago.

I wish you all a good summer and many artistic joys.