Saturday, November 24, 2012

A selfmate by Pavlos Moutecidis

Our great composer Pavlos Moutecidis has been awarded with a Special Prize, which I found in an issue of the magazine The Ural`s Problemist from Russia. You will see it here, at page 16.

The prized composition is a miniature selfmate (the White plays and forces the Black to give mate) in thirteen moves. There is a twin, moving all pieces two rows down, again selfmate s#13.

Problem-630
Pavlos Moutecidis
Special Prize
5K2/5S2/6k1/6r1/6QQ/8/8/8 (4+2)
s#13, Twins : a) Diagram, b) a8=a6
a)
1.Se5+ Kf6 2.Sc4 Kg6 3.Qhh5+ Kf6 4.Qh6+ Rg6 5.Qf3+ Ke6 6.Qhe3+ Kd7 7.Qb7+ Kd8 8.Qd4+ Rd6 9.Qa8+ Kc7 10.Qe5 Kd7 11.Qg7+ Ke6 12.Qg4+ Kf6 13.Qd8+ Rxd8#
b)
1.Qe2+ Kf4 2.Qe6 Kf3 3.Sd4+ Kf4 4.Kf7 Kg5 5.Qeh6+ Kg4 6.Qe2+ Rf3+ 7.Kg6 Kg3 8.Qhh2+ Kg4 9.Qe6+ Rf5 10.Kh7 Kg5 11.Qg8+ Kf6 12.Qd8+ Kf7 13.Qh5+ Rxh5#

To composer achieves his goal with continuous checks and pins. The pieces have great mobility. There are Switchbacks and Circuits of the pieces. The final mate image is Echo Chameleon (=the bK is mated in a squares of different colours) in Diagonal Mirror position.

1 comment:

Steven Dowd said...

Someone should really categorize every possible black rook minimal selfmate. I bet over half have been shown by the great Moutecidis. A discussion of echoes would be great too- very few of Moutecedis' are the sort of "poor echoes" you sometimes see with others (by that I mean practically every rook minimal mate is somehow an echo of every other).

Thanks for putting these up.