|
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| Welcome to the 47th World Congress of Chess Composition website! |  |
|
Organizer: Greek Chess Composition Committee Venue: Kallithea, Halkidiki, Greece, 4-11 September 2004 Hotel: Athos Palace and Pallini Beach (G-Hotels) |
Date |
News |
| Nov-16 |
We have, at last, uploaded the web photo-album that we had promised long time ago! Sincere thanks to Franziska Iseli, Kjell Widlert, Nilly Witztum, Themis Argirakopoulos and Bjørn Enemark for providing us with such valuable material: almost 450 photos! We used JAlbum, an excellent and free web photo-album software to build this. This is a highly recommended tool, give it a try for your own collections! The album starts on this page, happy browsing :) If you use the Mozilla Firefox browser, please take note that if you right-click on a slide, then you will not get the option of "Save Image As..." in the context menu. The slides have a map feature embedded (if you left-click on the left side you move to the previous photo, on the middle you get back to the thumbnail page, on the right you move to the next photo). It seems that this map feature puts off the "Save Image As..." menu option. It is an acknowledged bug of Firefox, and we are afraid we cannot do anything on this. |
| Nov-15 | On December 15, 2004, AloofHosting, the host server of the congress website, will be closing its doors forever. They explain the reasons of their decision in this page. For the time being, the congress site still works in the old address, but we have meanwhile transfered all content to a new free web host server. SiteSled offer 100 MB hard disk storage, 30 GB(!) transfer per month and FTP-based upload, absolutely free without any annoying pop-ups or advertising banners. Please change your bookmark (or favorite, if you prefer...) to http://www.sitesled.com/members/wccc and take note that we will have, in due course, the site of the WCCC 2005 on this site, too. Effective from today, we stop updating the old AloofHosting site any more. |
| Nov-12 |
Many thanks to Michael Barth, who converted the Halkidiki Internet Composing Ty 2004 award to Acrobat PDF format. It seems that we were trying with the wrong settings, since in his copy the diagrams look perfect on the monitor and the black squares print fine on an HP LaserJet that we tested. In order to view and print this file, you need the free Adobe Reader, which you can get from here. You can download the award from either of the below addresses, by right-clicking and choosing Save Target As...: Primary download at SiteSled Mirror download at Streamload The Greek Chess Composition Committee announce a thematic tourney in the memory of Pantelis Martoudis. See the brief obituary and enjoy 9 of his best compositions. The Memorial Tourney is for helpmates in 3 moves with one or more twins featuring transfer of the black King. No fairy pieces and conditions are allowed. Send your entries to Kostas Prentos, either to his post address Kleanthous 23, GR-54453, Thessaloniki, Greece, or via e-mail to prentos@the.forthnet.gr by May 15, 2005, at the latest. The judge will be Harry Fougiaxis, who will receive anonymous diagrams from Kostas. The award will be announced during the WCCC 2005, early in September. |
| Nov-03 |
We have just finished the award of the Internet composing tourney; it was a lot of tough work and we had to reconsider the order of the compositions few times during these two months. There were 67 entries by 45 composers from 20 countries, a truly impressive number! Our sincere thanks to all participants and congratulations to the composers of the successful problems. Any claims should be sent to Harry Fougiaxis within 3 months, please. Halkidiki Internet Tourney 2004 award (right-click and choose Save Target As...) On a side note, Emanuel Navon has submitted an improved version of his 4th Prize in Menachem Witztum's 7th Sabra Ty (better 2 solutions form and the mates are almost set); please refer to the updated page. |
| Oct-06 | At last, we uploaded the results of the 28th WCSC and of the Open Solving tourney (which, in any case, were already available in the sites of PCCC and Solving Chess.) Many thanks to Franziska Iseli for the photos; her material will be very useful for the photo album that we are currently working on! |
| Oct-01 | Menachem Witztum sent improved versions of his 3rd HM in the Congress Quick H#2 tourney and of Jean Haymann's 1st Prize in the 7th Israeli Sabra Ty; we updated the relevant pages accordingly. |
| Sep-28 |
We conclude the composing tournaments, organized by Congress participants, with the award of the 16th Spišská Borovička theme tourney. It was really confusing for your poor webmaster to produce the diagrams with all these fairy pieces, but at least we could rely for the text and the solutions on the Chess Composition Microweb relevant page of Juraj Lörinc! We will need some more time for our own Internet Composing Ty award, stay tuned :-) |
| Sep-23 |
Many thanks to Michal Dragoun for sending the award of the 6th Becherovka composing tourney, which was not ready on time to be included in the bulletin, and congratulations on his double win in both Solving Show events! Joost de Heer managed to correct his cooked 3rd Prize of the Tzuica tourney and the judges feel that this should retain its place; refer to the revised award for details. Do not also miss the ChessBase News of yesterday and the fully illustrated report of Themis Argirakopoulos. |
| Sep-18 | We uploaded the pages of the 7th Israeli Sabra, 2nd Romanian Tzuica, French Champagne and 5th Japanese Sake composing tourneys today; few modifications to the initial awards of the first three appearing in the bulletin were necessary, due to anticipated or cooked problems. |
| Sep-13 |
It has been a fabulous week and everybody seems to have enjoyed the congress. Our thanks to the PCCC for trusting us to host also next year's WCCC in Greece! Starting from today, we will keep updating the site with the results of all composing and solving tournaments. We have already uploaded the pages of the Congress 5-Days Long, Congress Quick #2, Congress Quick H#2, Macleod Whisky, 2nd Italian Grappa, 5th Moskovskaya Matreshka, Vodka, Ural Problemist, 6th Ukrainian Folk Crafts and Metaxa composing tourneys; for the results of the Open Solving Tournament and of the 28th WCSC, you may refer for the time being to the PCCC and L'ubomír Širáň's Solving Chess sites. For those wondering about the Internet Composing tourney, we unfortunately did not find the time to prepare the award during the congress week; we received a record number of 66 entries of exceptional quality, so we decided to postpone the award and evaluate the problems more carefully. We will publish the results on this site within the next 2-3 weeks and we also intend to produce a booklet with the award, which will be sent to all tournament participants. |
| Sep-04 | First day of the Congress! |
| Aug-31 |
Our warmest thanks to Frederic Friedel for including the WCCC / WCSC comprehensive report of Themis Argirakopoulos in the ChessBase News, one of the most popular OTB chess sites worldwide. ChessBase GmbH are the developers of the famous ChessBase - the personal, stand-alone chess database that has become the standard throughout the world - and of some of the strongest chess programs like Shredder and Deep Fritz, as well as the editors of the ChessBase Magazine, a regular CD/DVD publication which features numerous annotated games, extensive theory articles, strategy tips and huge multimedia material. Valery Gurov and Vladimir Priklonsky announce the 5th Moskovskaya Matreshka Vodka tourney. Please take note that entries should only be submitted to them during the congress, and not sent via e-mail! |
| Aug-28 | As promised, we added the touristic information on Thessaloniki; the page includes lots of photos, so it may take some time to download if you are on a slow connection. Do not also miss the 6th Ukrainian Folk Crafts thematic tourney for h#3 with Poltava twins, announced by Yevgen Reytsen. |
| Aug-23 | We have updated the page of the links with lots of touristic information on Halkidiki. Don't miss the top menu on that page! Information on Thessaloniki will be added in few days, stay tuned! |
| Aug-13 | As you are aware, the Olympic Games 2004 are held in Athens on 13-29 August, with the Paralympic Games (for athletes with a disability) on 17-28 September. |
| Aug-01 | Michel Caillaud announces the Champagne 2004 tourney asking for proof games with captures of "sibling" pieces. Refer to the updated composing news page. |
| July-19 | While all Greeks were celebrating for the winning of the European Football Cup, our Chess Problem Society were mourning for the loss of a distinguished member; Pantelis Martoudis passed away on Sunday, 4th of July, at the age of 79. We will announce, in due course, a composing tourney to his memory. For the time being, we added a small obituary, where we quote 9 of his compositions. |
| July-14 |
The PCCC official site reports that the new FIDE Album, containing the selected chess compositions published during the years 1995-97, will be available in the Congress. The Album contains 1153 compositions by 335 composers in 8 sections: 184 twomovers, 216 threemovers, 112 moremovers, 87 endgame studies, 241 helpmates, 88 selfmates, 185 fairies and 40 retros. In a recent e-mail, bernd ellinghoven confirmed that he will carry, with his car, appx. 200 copies of the Album and 100 of the Annex (containing the entries that were not selected but for half a point.) In the OTB scene, the Uzbek GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov defeated in a shock victory Britain's Michael Adams in the tiebreak games yesterday to win the FIDE world championship in Libya. Adams was clearly winning with white in the first game, then let it slip and in the end lost. In the second game "Kasim" held the draw quite easily. Visit the official site for the games and a full illustrated final report. |
| July-13 |
Tadashi Wakashima announces the traditional Japanese Sake tourney. We guess that he inspired the idea from the Bughouse blitz tourney of Tuesday evening. Pay also attention to the 2nd Romanian Tzuica tourney, organized by Ion Murarasu. Fairy chess fans, and not only, can find more details in the composing news dedicated page. |
| July-03 | We announce an Internet composing tourney, open to all problem chess friends worldwide. More details can be found in the composing news dedicated page. |
| July-02 | Potential participants should take note that the foreseen due date to sign up was yesterday. We will, of course, accept late registrations till 1st of August, but please keep in mind that we should be given enough time to arrange for the room bookings with the Hotels. |
| June-07 | Peter Gvozdják announces the 16th Spišská Borovička theme tourney. More details can be found in the composing news dedicated page. |
| June-05 | The lovely Bulgaria's top women player Antoaneta Stefanova is the new World Champion! After winning the first two games of the match, she needed only a draw to get the title. |
| June-02 | Problemists are usually complaining that our field is dominated by men, and indeed female composers and solvers are very few... To compensate for, you may visit the Women's World Chess Championship 2004 site for games, photos and interviews of these fine ladies at Elista. Ekaterina Kovalevskaya (Russia) and Antoaneta Stefanova (Bulgaria) start their "fight" for the title tomorrow. |
| June-01 | We will eventually upload a photo gallery after the end of the congress, but till then, you could have a look at the photo album of the 45th WCCC 2002 in Portoroz, Slovenia, created by Jernej Ostruh. We will use JAlbum of David Ekholm, an excellent and free web photo album generator, which needs at least v1.3 of Sun Java runtime (or equivalent) to run. You can, however, view the album online, even if you don't have Java VM installed in your computer. Please check this sample and let us know if you face any trouble. |
| May-25 | The excursion will be held on Thursday morning till afternoon, 9th of September. We will take a boat trip around the Holy Mount of Athos, the third peninsula of Halkidiki, and also spend some time in the nearby city of Ouranoupolis for rest, shopping and lunch (not included in the excursion). Please take note that, since women are not allowed inside Mount of Athos, we will not enter the monasteries. |
| May-15 |
This site is hosted at AloofHosting, a free web hosting provider, which offers 250MB storage disk space, 3GB bandwidth per month on fast 100mbit connection and FTP based control for easy uploading. We have bought a Plus account, but even the free service is of excellent value: no disgusting popup advertisements, no banners at the top or bottom of each screen, no text-ads inserted! All they do, in the free acounts, is to change some of the content into relevant links to products on Amazon and
other web sites. Highly recommended! Since AloofHosting do not allow files other than web pages, flash and images, we host the Acrobat PDF files at Streamload, a superb unlimited file storage, hosting and delivery service. Prices start at $4.95 only for 1000 MB of bandwidth per month! |
| May-12 | We have added some more details on how you can get from the airport to the hotel. |
| May-05 |
A bughouse chess tournament (Swiss system, 5-minutes long blitz games) is scheduled for Tuesday evening, 7th of September. OTB chess fans should try this enjoyable (and quite popular in the Internet) chess variant. If you are not familiar with bughouse, please check the main guidelines and strategy tips, as well as the complete set of rules for full details. We plan another surprise for Wednesday evening, 8th of September. We are proud to announce that we will organize, for the very first time in a WCCC, a Fairy Solving Show! The two top rated grandmasters of composing and solving in the world join their skills for this brand new event and we trust that all problem chess friends will appreciate their time and efforts, as much as we do. |
| Apr-25 | We invite all those interested in giving a lecture, to let us know about it. Lectures are scheduled for Monday evening, 6th of September. In the event that all lectures do not fit in a single evening, we will arrange to have a second part on Tuesday evening, 7th of September. Please let us know in advance the topic you wish to present and the expected duration of your lecture. Take also note that the video projector for the Solving Show will be always available during the congress, so if you feel like preparing a neat Powerpoint presentation, you are more than welcome! |
| Apr-15 | Some participants organize informal composing tourneys during the WCCC's. If you plan such a tourney this year in Halkidiki, you could send us the theme in advance and we will be glad to include the announcement in the congress material for all participants. Please advise theme, possible example and closing date / time, keeping in mind that the prize giving ceremony is scheduled for Thursday evening, 9th of September. |
| Apr-10 | We are glad to announce that Brian Stephenson will be the Director of the 28th World Chess Solving Championship (WCSC), assisted by Peter Bakker, Neal Turner and Ward Stoffelen. All four are very well experienced in WCSC's and we will do our best to help them in organizing a successful championship. The same team will also arrange the Open Solving Tourney. For further details, please have a look at the solving news dedicated page. |
| Feb-18 | We issued the official announcement of the congress today. The change to the venue and date originally advertised (Crete in October) has occurred because of difficulties over costs. Kallithea and Halkidiki, in general, is a well-appointed holiday area and the weather during this period is still excellent. The G-Hotels Complex have a long-standing tradition in domestic and international chess events. The World Youth Chess Championship 2003 and the 74th FIDE Congress were held at this venue last October. |