(22.12.2013) The Award of the strong Julia’s Fairies Marine Thematic Tourney 2013 is ready! Here you can see the winners of all three sections with comments of the judge GM Petko Petkov and direct link to the whole award published in the Julia's website.

Section H# (H=, H==)                       Section HS# (HS=, HS==)

Georgy Evseev & Lev Grolman (Russia) - A unique task problem! I congratulate the authors on their highest creative achievement! Two echo-finales are obtained with a pin of 6 (!!) pieces (the black Q + 5 neutrals), while the neutral pins are in reciprocal cycle: Nereid -> Charybdis -> Triton -> Scylla -> Nereid! Of course, the play here is not 100% identical in the strategic attitude: in the first solution the final is a beautiful tempo-move of the white King, but in the second the white King takes over from the black Q in capturing a SK. 
On this occasion I want to say that a judge should not be fanatical about aesthetics: it is always necessary to apply a high aesthetic criteria, but without forgetting that there are still some limits in human and chess possibilities. Escaping this boundary is unrealistic fantasy. 

a) 1.Qe3xd4 nTRd3-e3 2.nNDh7-d3 nCYd6-f5 3.nSKd7-e5 nSKg1-f3+ 4.Kf4-e4 Ka5-a6= 
b) 1.nTRd3-d2 nNDh7-c2 2.Qe3-c3 nCYd6-e4 3.Kf4-e3 nSKg1-e2+ 4.Ke3-d3 Kd8xd7=

Mario Parrinello (Italy) - in the beginning the white battery POd5/MPf3 fires. Moves of the white POd5 three times create new batteries of type PO/NE. The mates are very beautiful – the black SI occupies places vacated by the white PO – the Umnov theme in combination with specific blocks of the squares. Sharp, very interesting play with cross checks! An excellent problem by the Italian maestro!

I. 1.NDf4 SIf6 2.POd6+ POe5+ 3.POd7+ SId6#

II. 1.NDe3 SIc7 2.POc5+ POd4+ 3.POb5+ SIxc6-c5#

III. 1.NDc4 SId7+ 2.POe6+ POd5+ 3.POf7+ SIe6#

Section Series problems

Sven Trommler (Germany) - A beautiful Meredith-problem! Annihilation of the white pawns f6/e4 is realized in a very interesting way – with distant blocks of the squares g7/e3, but after that also with blocks of squares g5/f4 respectively. The black King vacates square е5 for its TR and ND. A new annihilation – this time of the black TRe5/NDe5, occurs on the mating moves! I believe it’s possible to tell that we have a special form of “Novotny” with sacrifices of the black TR/ND on square е5!

I. 1.TRe1-e3 2.Ke5xe4 3.NDh8xf6-e5 4.TRe3-f3 5.TRf3-f4 NDd4xe5-f6#
II. 1.NDh8-g7 2.Ke5xf6 3.TRe1xe4-e5 4.NDg7-h6 5.NDh6-g5 TRe8xe5-e4#

The whole award is on the following direct link:

http://juliasfairies.com/tourneys/awards/award-marine-tt2013/