Saturday, April 23, 2011

Blog Statistics, 3rd year

Presented a little bit delayed (but they do not change, of course). For the period 07/February/2010 thru 06/February/2011 the tool Google Analytics has collected a multitude of elements, from which I present here some :

Visitors : 5962

Absolutely unique visitors : 3586

Visitors : Started about 8 per day, increased very slightly but constantly, ended about 16 per day. Only two days had over 50 visitors.

Coming From where : 28% from sites with links to this blog, 58% from search machines, 14% from direct visits.

Countries of visitors : 835 from United States, 690 from Greece, 388 from Bulgaria, 336 from Philippines, 326 from Spain, 257 from Poland, 250 from United Kindom, 191 from France, 190 from Germany, 173 from Serbia, 145 from India, 143 from Brazil, 116 from Nederlands, 110 from Canada, 107 from Indonesia, 105 from Israel, 104 from Italy, 103 from Romania, 87 from Australia, 84 from Slovakia, 81 from Russia, and follow about ninety countries.

Most popular posts : Composers and their problems, Multiple pawn promotions, Dedication for Manolas-60, Terminology for Problemists.

Most popular Biography : Sam Loyd

Returning visitors : 42%, that means 58% are new.
48 returned over 200 times, 259 returned 101-200 times, 239 returned 51-100 times.

84 visits lasted more than half an hour, more 273 lasted more than 10 minutes and more 419 lasted more than 5 minutes.


I hope that the content of the posts was useful to the visitors.
Thank you all!
Manolas Emmanuel
a.k.a. Alkinoos

Friday, April 22, 2011

Musicological riddle

Wishes to all, (they go with the season), to live a better life!


A book by Werner Keym has been recently published titled [Eigenartige Schachprobleme], (in german, editions Nightrider Unlimited, 2010), which includes many of his problems (and of many other composers) with excellent comments.
The automatic translation of the title to english gives [Strange chess problems], but I would prefered [Chess problems of special art]. Really, I have found them very interesting.

From this book we will present the five-hundredth problem which contains a musicological interest, as the composer says.
It is an easy two-mover. It could also be positioned mirrored or upside-down, but the composer says that only this position is musicologically correct.

Can you explain why is he saying that?

(From this contest is excluded the Attica champion Nikos Mendrinos, who has recently received this book as a prize).

(Problem 493)
Werner Keym
"Eigenartige Schachprobleme", 2010,
#2.
(3 + 1)
[2R5/8/R7/7k/8/8/8/1K6]



Answer :
We write down the pieces of the problem : White Kb1, Ra6, Rc8. Black Kh5.
We note the squares of the pieces [b1 a6 c8 h5], and we write separately the letters of the files from the numbers of the rows [bach 1685] and we see the surname of the music composer Johann Sebastian Bach and the year of his birth.
If we somehow change the position on the chessboard, we do not take this piece of information.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Solving Contest, 2011-04-11, ESSNA 7


(Click on the photo to enlarge it).

Many contestants in this event.
There were young and old solvers, men and women, which is very satisfying.

You may see here the problems and here the solutions.

Results :
Champion of Attica Mendrinos Nikos, 22/30,
second Fougiaxis Harry, 16/30,
third Sklavounos Panagis, 10/30,
and follow Skyrianoglou Dimitris, Delikanakis Nikos, Konidaris Panagiotis, Ilandzis Spyros, Anemodoyras Leokratis, Papargyriou Anastasios, Zervogiannis Alexandros, Katopodis Giannis, Ladas Dimitris, Anastasiou Marios, Manolas Emmanuel, Pagali Marianna, Mixaloudis Giorgos, Douni Maria, Margaritis Giannis, Koulaxouzidis Giorgos, Mitsakis Kostas, Kapnia Dimitra.

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

ECSC_7, 2011, European Championship

Problems, solutions, solvers rank and photographs of the winners here.

Team results : 1. Ukraine, 2. Serbia, 3. Poland

Personal results :
1. Piotr Murdzia, Poland
2. Marjan Kovacevic, Serbia
3. Georgy Evseev, Russia
...
12. 24. Kostas Prentos, Greece (he was placed 12_th in the Open SC).