february 23 2016

greffier's word

The faithful listeners attended the second session of 2016 of the Master who had returned from far away places where he could recharge his batteries.

Pierre was live from South America, where it was 6am. Despite the indecent hour for a Saturday, he was in particularly good shape.

Eric, Daniel and myself completed the picture.

Here is the masterly report.

Master's words

When you have 3 figures accompanied by a modest pawn, what a satisfaction to sacrifice them all to promote. The marshal's baton!

Our endgame of the day is based on a misunderstanding. It was presented as a miraculous draw "reminding a study" (ah! how studies have good back among those which, in addition, ignore the artistic Chess). It is in reality a win requiring, certainly, a great precision, a win certainly difficult to require in full game but which should not have escaped the many analysts, supposed to have all their time...

Then a study advised by the one who was our best composer, although of Ukrainian origin. A great ZZ to avoid a bad pawn ending.

Precisely, in the pawn endgame, a refusal of a capture to avoid a classic by Polerio.

In the game of the day, the "fire onboard" is set by... the opponent of the well known arsonist. This game was played in Brno, which I had the pleasure to discover last summer.

The fairy section leaves an important place to Finland, a curious country on the chess level: no great players, but great composers and... even greater solutionists.

For practice, some rather odd 2#, a miniature 3# discovered in my wanderings, then the prototype of the Siers theme, an excellent French cycle, a 4# from the 19th century and another more recent one, given to the "youth" section of the January international tournament. Two nice Finnish helpmates, an easy looking selfmate, an AUW and a... double AUW!

Master's diagrams