2022 - THE PROBLEM COMPOSING YEAR IN REVIEW

The year 2022 had six Unofficial World Championship Checker Problem Composing Contests, all at this web site.

The contest dates, themes, and winners were as follows:

DATE IN 2023	THEME	WINNERS
Feb	Zugzwangs	Roy Little
Apr	Virile Variations	Ed Atkinson
Jun	Breeches	Roy Little & Wilma Wolverton (tie)
Aug	Back and Forth Moves	Bill Salot
Oct	Steals or Avoiding Steals	Ed Atkinson
Dec	Strategic Non-Strokes	Ed Atkinson & Jim Loy (tie)

Ed Atkinson entered the winners’ circle in half the contests during 2023, making him “Problemist of the Year” for the second consecutive year, and for the fifth time overall, tying Roy Little’s record of five such awards. Together they have dominated these contests for the last ten years. Sadly, they both have passed away, but their stored contest entries will still appear in contests lined up for 2023. We hope others will join.

The contest statistics for 2022 showed a further drop in voters and visitors. But the contests will continue as long as there are good, original, unpublished problems to present.

Year	Number of Contests	Problems per Contest	Votes per Contest	Visitors per Contest
2012	8	3.6	19.9	No data
2013	6	4.8	17.7	No data
2014	5	4.7	17.8	304.7
2015	6	4.2	15.8	322.6
2016	6	4.3	17.3	313.7
2017	6	5.2	16.2	373.0
2018	6	5.5	15.7	314.2
2019	6	4.8	19.0	349.7
2020	6	4.7	16.2	217.3
2021	4	3.5	15.5	150.8
2022	6	4.2	10.3	121.8

The International Voters’ Ladder started in June 2017. Here are the voters who picked the most contest winning problems in the years beginning in 2017:

Contest Year	Voter who picked most winners	Number of winners picked
2017	Liam Stephens (Ireland)	4 out of 4 (100%)
2018	Lloyd Gordon (Canada)	5 out of 5 (100%)
2019	Liam Stephens (Ireland)	3 out of 5 (60%)
2020	George Hay	4 out of 6 (67%)
2021	George Hay	4 out of 4 (100%)
2022	Slava Goren (Russia)	4 out of 5 (80%)

Who will it be in ’23?