Less than a week ago the preliminary award of the tourney Magyar Sakkvilag 2023 (MSV) appeared (please see here or here). As tournament director acted Peter Gyarmati (Hungary) and as judge Michal Hlinka (Slovakia). The event was won by Steffen Slumstrup Nielsen (Denmark). I did not participate.
As usual, I played through the winning studies. One of them gave me a sense of déjà vu. This was a study of Marek Halski (Poland). He was born in 1950 and is a very successful composer, and he was active as solver too. At ARVES he even has his own biographical page. This year he will judge the 10th FRME tourney, and for this reason I had only recently looked at his studies. I only found two of them in my database with all ARVES downloads, and one caused the déjà vu.
White to move and draw.
Marek Halski
Československý šach 2022, 1st prize
From the study: "Theme: The systematic movements of a group of figures in thematic try are spoiled by an unexpected knight manoeuvre with a sacrifice of the rook. White find a clever way out of a sophisticated method of win for Black."
From the 2nd to the 14th move only the kings and rooks move.
15. Nc3!!
Martin Minski: "Nc3!! is the move of the tournament [...]."
A great study indeed.
Here at move 15 also starts the remarkable try with 15. Rc5+?.
You can find the award in several formats at ARVES, and at Chess Study Art there are the studies from this tourney with some discussion.
Let's now see Halski's new study, the one for MSV.
Colors switched! (You'll soon see why.)
Black to move and win.
Marek Halski, Magyar Sakkvilag 2023, special Honourable Mention.
This position is only roughly similar to the old study. But let's see a position that appears later in the solution.
This is the same position as in the other study, only once the white pawn is on a3 and the other time on a4. And after Rc5+ this makes no difference, because Black wins by means of the same maneuver.
Judge Hlinka wrote in the award: "A very interesting manoeuvre by which white systematically pushes
the black king to the fatal first horizontal. It is important to see the study by the same author, from which he apparently drew inspiration and he has also worked the
study to win."
So, Hlinka knew about the predecessor and considered it still to be an original (MSV is a tourney for original studies as the ARVES tournament calender reports).
I'm afraid we need to examine the range of Halski's self-citation more precisely. Fortunately, the Chess Suite has extensive comparison options that I have implemented in 2016 for completely different purposes.
Here you see a visual comparison of the moves of the 1 prize study (with the try as mainline) on the left and the MSV study on the right. Most of the time the positions differ (pawn a3/a4) but the moves are the same. Probably it is save to say that the MSV study is a recycled version of the 1st prize study with its try, and all enhanced with an additional introduction (resulting in a very long study with 35 moves).
This raises a few questions. What is an original? What is an anticipation? Can someone create originals by recycling tries from other (people's) studies? (I assume the answer is always: It depends on the judge.)
You already know that the two studies above deal with systematic maneuvers. And within these maneuvers there are no pawn moves and no captures. So, checking the DTZ values could be interesting. But as in many cases last year, things are much simpler again. If you 2-click the material RNP vs RP you will get this position.
You see what is coming!? Let's compare the moves, too.
Here you see the move by move comparison of the 2-click download on the left and Halski's MSV study on the right. Most of the time positions and moves are the same. And then, after differing king moves of the losing party, at least the moves are the same again. Only the very first moves really differ.
So far I have reported facts and asked questions. But that is often enough to assume that someone has a certain opinion. In order to avoid misunderstandings, I would like to express my opinion explicitly.
I think that Marek Halski has modified his old study to get a new original one. Judge Hlinka followed this view. I wouldn't have done this.
I have no reason to assume that Halski 2-clicked the new study. I don't even know if Halski or Hlinka even know what 2-clicking is. The fact that Hlinka recently published a 2-click study by Gonzalez in Československý šach suggests maybe that he has never heard of it (see part VIII of my list).
Addendum 28 February 2024: I am happy to add important
information. Steffen Slumstrup Nielsen shared two links with me on Twitter/X (see here).
The first one leads to a study of P. Kiryakov which won 1st prize in the tourney EG 2020-2021 (see here). This study shows a similar maneuver. The award appeared in December 2023 and thus 11 months after the award of Československý šach 2022. So you're better off subscribing to EG!
The second link leads to the PDF of the award of EG 2020-2021 by Árpád Rusz (see here). Therein Rusz presents his own solution(!) and with respect to the maneuver compares the study with one of I. Bilek (Magyar Sakkélet, 1971, 1st prize).