Studies preliminary awarded for the Jan Timman 70 jubilee tournament.
Summary
The Royal Dutch Chess Federation KNSB organized an endgame study composition tourney
to celebrate the 70th birthday of o.t.b. GM and also prolific composer Jan Timman.
The prize fund for this tourney consisted of money prizes (500 €, sponsored by KNSB),
15 king statutes made by the Dutch artist Margaret Wevers (sponsored by o.t.b. IM Hans Böhm),
100 € for the best study by a strong practical player (sponsored by o.t.b. GM Jan Sprenger who initiated
and organized this event),
two endgame study databases HHdbVI (Harold van der Heijden)
and chess books by Jan Timman (KNSB – Dharma Tjiam & Erik Mijnheer).
As the tourney director of the Jan Timman-70 JT I received no less than 95 entries (one twin
study) by 66 composers from 24 countries. Among the participants there are 17 composition
title holders (4 GM, 7 IM and 6 FM) and 19 o.t.b. title holders (7 GM, 9 IM, 2 FM, 1 CM).
Three o.t.b. GM’s had an ELO-rating higher than 2600 at the time of submission!
Eight studies proved to be unsound when checking with Stockfish with a large proportion of
the 7EGTB and all sub-7 men EGTB’s accessible during calculation. For anticipation vetting,
the magnificent tool CQL 6.1 (Costeff & Stiller) was used.
For 8 studies a relevant
anticipation (one almost completely anticipated) was found, sometimes already indicated by
the author. Obviously, in all cases I only reported my findings to the judge leaving it up to
him to decide about the degree of anticipation and the relevance of a (minor) dual.
A special prize was available for a study by a strong practical player (2000+ ELO rating, not
more than ten entries in HHdbVI). But when I received the ranking of the tourney from the
judge, it turned out that not a single study by a “strong practical player” had made into the
main award. As all entries were still anonymous to him, I proposed Jan to establish a separate
section and sent him the 14 studies that qualified for this section.
Some studies have comments by Jan Timman (labelled with pre-fix JT) or Harold van der
Heijden (HH), while all other (textual) comments are from the composer (sometimes the
prefix Composer is added for clarity). Further, the solutions were edited to remove redundant
analysis.
This is the preliminary award. Claims regarding soundness and anticipation must be sent to
Please note that submitted studies that are not in the award will only become available for the
composers for submission to other events after the award becomes final (scheduled 31i2022).
Harold van der Heijden, tourney director.
SECTION Strong players.