The preliminary award of the 11th FIDE World Cup in Composing 2023, section D-Endgame studies is available. I have described the general conditions of the tourney here.
41 composers submitted a study. This number is slighlty higher than that of the 10th edition (37
participants), but below the number of the 8th or 9th edtion (56 or 48 participants, resp.).
The award was accomplished by judge Branislav Djurašević, who received the 41 studies on anonymous diagrams. He included 14 studies into the award (4 prizes, 5 honorable mentions and 5 commendations).
This is a usual size. The last three awards contained 14, 16 and again 14 studies.
The award also contains information on the remaining 27 studies, which the judge divided into four groups. Group A of incorrect studies contains four and group B of anticipated studies contains three examples. Then comes group C with studies being of "insufficient quality for this kind of tournament and/or partially anticipated". This group contains 12 studies. And finally group D of "good, quality studies, but still not included in the Award" with 9 studies. (That's a total of 42 instead of 41, which is probably due to the fact that one study (D40) was withdrawn.)
1st prize.
White to play and win.
3+4
That was a surprise, because it starts with an endgame tablebase position. This study will therefore get its own blog post in a few days. That post will also contain the answers to a question I published yesterday on Twitter/X and on which the world champion and some grandmasters have already commented.
2nd prize
White to move and win
9+6
What a difference in the starting position! And the solution starts out loud: 1.Ra7+! Kxa7 2.Qxd6! (the !s are taken from the solution). This second move however, this early capture of the unmoved bishop, was seemingly the little detail that cost this study 1st prize (and 500 Euro). Who wants to decide that?! The judge has to.
However, these two studies also have something in common. The 1st prize has 38 moves and the 2nd prize has 23. These numbers jumped at me, in particular since I had just read Steffen Slumstrup Nielsen's award for the 5th FIDE World Cup a few days ago, where he criticized an "urge of epicness" as one of the unfortunate tendencies. Nielsen thought the average 14 moves in that World Cup was too long (and I felt guilty since my submitted study has 19 moves).
The 3rd prize is shorter, but not short: 16 moves.
3rd prize.
White to move and draw.
7+6
The judge praises the counterplay here and I can only agree with that.
Since this is a beginner's blog, I'm sure I can ask a silly question: What about the starting
positions? Okay, please forget this question. I'll get used to.
4rd prize
White to move and win.
8+7
I think I read from Roycroft that the starting position has to be what the idea calls for. And in this study (17 moves), the black c-pawn is blocked five times, which is really nice.
I've gone through all the HMs and Cs and they were all worth the time. The pawn ending might fall off a bit because it's unspectacular.
Which move deserves the title “Move of the Tourney”? There are more than a handful of worthy candidates, but the one to beat seems to be 7.Bf2 in D7, that's the study which received the 4th HM.
As a participant, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the tournament director Aleksey Oganesjan and the judge Branislav Djurašević.