Hastings Chess Congress

The Hastings Chess Congress occupied most of my time from 28 December to 5 January, since I entered all four of the supporting events. Just in the lowest graded sections of course, not the Masters! Scored 3/5 in the Xmas AM event (winning £15 grading prize), but only 1/5 in the Xmas PM event. Then in the Weekend event scored 3/5 again, against stronger players (winning £25 grading prize). Only managed 1.5/4 in the New Year event. 

These results continue my improved play over the past six months, with similar 3/5 results at Thanet in August and Bournemouth at the end of October. I'm also doing well in the internal Hastings Chess Club Rush Cup event. I hope all this will restore my ECF grade to near 100 again when the new gradings are announced later this month.

Symmetric Rhombic Tours

In November I looked at the problem of enumerating the symmetric tours of squares and diamonds type.  I found there were four distinct ways (1, 2, 3, 4) of arranging the diamonds in a quarter board, and twenty ways these could be arranged together on the board, namely in the ten pairs 11, 22, 33, 44, 12, 13, 14, 23, 24, 34, each either in direct (=) or oblique (~) symmetry. This enumeration is not yet complete but I found unique solutions in the 22= and 44~ cases, both being double halfboard tours.

A Metasquare Figured Tour

T. R. Dawson composed a figured tour with what he called the 'double triangle numbers' of the form n.(n+1) namely 2, 6, 12, 20, 30, 42, 56 in a figure of eight formation that was published in the London Evening Standard in 1932 (B17 in my Figured Tours booklet). I like to call these numbers 'metasquares'.

Waiting for a council inspector to call yesterday I though to while away the time by composing a figured tour and recalled the above task. There are too many or too few metasquares to arrange in a metasquare. It occurred to me to include the number 0 = 0.1 in place of 64 which would give a set of eight metasquares, all even numbers that might be arranged on a diagonal.

This is the result, composed 25 November 2015. The numbers are in cyclic order.

Chess in Dorset

I had an enjoyable weekend at the Bournemouth Chess Congress. Scored 3 wins and 2 losses.
Should have been 4 wins but I slipped up at the end of the third game out of sheer tiredness.
Probably went for too long a walk to Shelley Park and back through Boscombe Chine. Also took a walk round the pier there, where they have a number of musical instruments of xylophone type on display for people to play. This may be an idea Hastings Pier could take up.

I also slipped up at the end of the fourth game but it was already lost, being several pawns down.
Took another long walk on the Sunday, taking in some plaice and chips at Harry Ramsden's near Bournemouth Pier. Got back just in time for the fifth game, but slipped up immediately at the start by giving away a knight, yet still somehow won.

The hotel I stayed in wasn't as quiet as usual due to a Halloween night party going on till late.

Symmetric Chessboard Knight Tours

I've just completed an extensive piece of work collecting and constructing symmetric knight's tours on the normal chessboard. There are 183 tours on the page, showing all possible central angle formations.

http://www.mayhematics.com/t/8s.htm

Here is one group of tours from the page, (hh), (hi), (hj):

The first two are my own constructions the (hj) is from Wenzelides in Schachzeitung 1849.

It was only a month or so ago that I was able to see the work by Brede 1844 that contains 24 tours, all but #14 being in 180 degree rotational symmetry. It has become available due to digitisation. This was evidently an important pioneering work that seems to have been under-appreciated. The tours are at the end of the book:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qf5dAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

There is also a semimagic tour formed of two copies of a 4x8 semimagic tour joined together.

Long Walk to the East Hill

Went for a good long walk from around 11:30 to 3 pm to get away from the noise of plastering work being done at last on the building where I live. Went into the Hastings old town, and up the steps to the West Hilll Cafe for fish and chips (though it wasn't really any better than I could cook for myself at home). From there I decided to follow the contour round with a view to ending up at East Hill. This took me eventually to steps leading up to what is shown on the map as Pinders Walk. From there to the beacon on East Hill and down all the steps and along the seafront. It was a lovely sunny day, but surprisingly few people about for most of the time.

This is the longest bit of walking I have done since  went to Ramsgate for the Thanet Chess Congress back on 21-24 August. It was sunny for most of the time there, and I walked every day the two miles to the venue and back, from the Oak Hotel by the Ramsgate Harbour. The walking seems to have cleared my mind too since I played quite well, scoring 3.5/5 in the Minor, I won the first three games, so at that stage was leading the tournament, but couldn't keep it up. I suppose I should have reported it here on my Diary at the time, but can't seem to keep it going regularly.

Interlacing Tour

Here is an image of a tour formed from four copies of a circuit that does not cross itself. One move in each circuit is deleted and the loose ends joined up to convert the pseudotour into a tour, a process I call simple-linking. This is not a new result.

However the paths have been made to interlace, passing alternately over and under each other. This is the new aspect, and accomplishing this was the difficult part of the drawing. Other colour schemes might prove more attractive, but for this first attempt I have used primary colours, with the links in grey. Making a tour of this type was suggested in part by correspondence with Harold Cataquet.