Nunn John. Endgame Competition 2005

Выходные данные не указаны, 2006. — 37 p.I am pleased to announce the results of the John Nunn 50th Birthday Study Tourney. First, a few words about the administration of the event. The closing date for entries was the end of October 2005. Round about this time, the tourney controller Brian Stephenson converted the entries to PGN format and passed the entries to me without the composers’ names.During the following month, I checked the studies for analytical soundness. At the start of December, those unsound studies which seemed capable of repair were returned to the composers for correction, with a further month being allowed for this step. Although a few studies which would have featured in the award could not be corrected, several other studies were successfully repaired.Many of the corrected studies ended up in the award, so this was a worthwhile step. At this stage, there were 59 studies still in the tourney. I then made a preliminary selection of studies for the award and these were sent to Harold van der Heijden for anticipation checking. Only a couple of studies turned out to be seriously anticipated, although some partial anticipations led to changes in the order of the award. I then re-checked the studies in the award for soundness, which unfortunately resulted in one prize-winner being removed from the award.The standard of the entries was very high. Although I was quite tough with the judging, there are 30 studies in the award. I accept that some of the studies not in the award would certainly have been honoured in many other tourneys; likewise some of the lower-ranked studies in this award would have gained prizes elsewhere. Any composer whose study appears in the award can be proud of his achievement.Judging study tourneys is not an easy task and personal taste inevitably plays a large part. With my background as an over-the-board player, I tend to favour clear-cut and pointed studies. I solved (or, in some cases, attempted to solve) almost all the studies and included ‘solver satisfaction’ as one of the elements in the assessment of each study. Complexity is not necessarily an advantage in a study; difficult analysis and obscure sideariations may only serve to hide the main point of the study and frustrate the solver. Quite a few studies featured 6-man database positions or were heavily dependent on them, but in many of these the analysis given indicated that the composer had not used a database. Whether or not the composer has used a database is in my view utterly irrelevant; in any case, if the composer does not choose to reveal his method of composition (and I see no reason why he should), the judge can hardly be expected to read the composer’s mind. I judged such studies on the same basis as all the other studies in the award, with the sole difference of giving greater weight to originality. The composer who discovers something remarkable in a database deserves credit; the composer who repeats the discovery does not.