Our cover photo was taken in the end of May during the spring meeting of the
Finnish Chess Problem Society. We have had spring and autumn meetings since
1989, with the year 1997 as the only exception. This year´s meeting was
the 44th in order. See p. 59 for a report on this event, which included composing,
solving and lectures.
There are many reasons why such meetings are important: they offer a chance
to test your composing and solving abilities and allow interesting discussions
on various topics. The competitions are not very serious ones, mainly for entertainment
purposes. But, for example, the composing competitions sometimes lead to fruitful
themes and composing ideas. On several occasions the entries have been improved
later on and the themes have been used in composing competitions. At least one
problem composed during these meetings made it to the FIDE album. We hope that
this kind of activity keeps the chess problemists occupied also in the future!
The first pages of this issue are devoted to the ECSC, which took place in Kiev
in April. The capital of Ukraine was a pleasant experience for the four Finnish
participants. The competitions did not fulfill our highest dreams, but such
things happen. However, in the individual competition Harri Hurme managed to
win the Senior Championship, narrowly ahead of Aleksandr Azhusin of Russia.
Congratulations! On pp. 44-46 Terho Marlo writes of the event and competition,
the result tables are on pp. 46-47, the problems on pp. 48-49 and finally the
solutions on pp. 50-51.
Henry Tanner is a versatile problemist, surely well known to our readers. He
has selected 13 problems and commented on them, so please read the pages 52-57
with care - there is plenty of interesting material to study!
Neal Turner chose an innocent-looking three-mover for his column Paha pähkinä,
A Hard Nut to Crack. The composer is well known for his devilishly difficult
problems. What is your feeling after solving or trying to solve the problem
on p. 57?
On the same page we have a short summary of the Finnish entries to the 9th WCSC.
Our composing efforts were supervised by Hannu Harkola, who has also written
this summary. As mentioned before, for this competition we decided to use a
system in which group leaders were responsible for activating composers in different
sections. It will be interesting to see what kind of problems this competition
will produce.
Further in this issue we have several short notices, mainly for our domestic
readers. Please note that there are three international composing competitions,
all highly recommended: Kauko Virtanen 80 JT & Kenneth Solja 55 JT, see
TN 6/2011, and Terho Marlo 50 JT, see TN 1/2012.
The originals columns on pp. 61-70 offer a good menu for connoisseurs: orthodox
mates, studies, helpmates, selfmates, fairy chess problems and retros.
The next issue is due to appear after the summer.
Published 14th June 2012