Australian Junior Chess Problem-Solving Championship 2015

This year the national Junior Chess Championships took place in the capital city of Canberra, and an accompanying Problem-Solving competition was held on January 20th. Now in its ninth year, the solving event was successfully run by Nigel Nettheim and attracted 75 entrants (52 boys, 17 girls, and 6 adults). Nigel has put together an engaging Report on the event which you can access from this site. The Report details what transpired on the day and contains the question sheets and solutions, as well as a supplement guide on how to run such a contest. There is also a note requesting a transition to new control of this annual competition.

The contestants were given two hours to tackle fifteen problems. The directmates were set by Geoff Foster, while Nigel proposed the endgame studies. These well-selected tasks range from the easy to some that are quite tough, so as to give any newcomers a chance while sorting out the best solvers. Here I quote two of the trickier problems from the paper – have a go at them! Check the Report to see if you have solved them correctly. To find out who were the prize-winners this year, go to the Problem Solving Results page of the official Championships site.

Incidentally, I have added a page called Solving and Composing Events to the Oz Archives section of this site. Here you can view the Reports of all the earlier junior solving events (previously accessible from the Links page), and also the documents relating to the recent Guided Composing competition.