Last year Christopher Jones, Grandmaster for Chess Composition and current President of the British Chess Problem Society (BCPS) had made up his mind to publish a selection of his compositions in book form. A cooperation with Nightrider Unlimited (and two fellow campaigners) had quickly come about, and the project could be finalised within a few months.

The anthology now on hand contains nearly 300 of Jones' compositions from the last 32 years, largely furnished with lucid comments by the author. Practically all his problems have to be attributed to the helpmate genre which is highly favoured by him, besides a kind of composition enjoying an unwaning popularity among solvers. A small number of helpselfmates has been included as well. All problems go without fairy pieces as Jones has always preferred an 'orthodox' setting.

Inside the book, the diagrams and the corresponding solutions are mostly placed on opposite pages; only in two chapters (4 and 6) the solutions are given at the end in order to encourage the readers to work out the solutions for themselves. As is widely known, Christopher Jones belongs to the best helpmate composers worldwide, and the compositions of this selection are of highest quality.

In his preface the author informs us about his chess development, and the British problem chess legend John Rice has contributed a further illuminating foreword.
On closer examination of our excerpt you will get a more detailed impression of the book.

Christopher Jones
Selected Helpmates 1989–2021

Kuhn/Murkisch Series No. 49
1st edition, Nightrider Unlimited, Göttingen 2022
119 + vii pp.

Softcover: 125 copies
15 x 21 cm
weight: 191 g

ISBN 978-3-935586-00-9  

Price: 10 € or US$ plus postage
Order exclusively from Schwalbe book sales www.berlinthema.de/
– Ralf Krätschmer, e-mail: ralf.kraetschmer@t-online.de