Game of the Year: 13th Place --------------------------------------------
by League Commissioner IM Greg Shahade
--------------------------------------------
This is the first
installment of a series of weekly articles that will determine what
game was voted as the Best Game of 2006. In 2005, Game of the Year was
a one man show, decided solely by NM Arun Sharma. This year we have
four judges that will rank the games and the scores will be added up to
determine the winner. The only games eligible for Game of the Year are
the thirteen "Games of the Week". If a game is ranked as 1st place by a
judge, it receives 13 points. If it's ranked 13th place, it receives 1
point. If there is a tie, whichever game had the highest individual
ranking will win on tiebreak. Thus if one game is ranked 1st by 2
judges, and another game is ranked 1st only by one judge, the one that
is ranked 1st by more judges is awarded the higher position.
The four judges are:
IM Greg Shahade (USCL Commissioner)
NM Arun Sharma
NM Dennis Monokroussos (Regular commentator for ChessBase.com)
GM Alex Shabalov+WFM Elizabeth Vicary (These two worked as a team to
determine their rankings)
Kiewra
vs Pinto: White to Move after 22..Qh4
Kiewra ruined what could have been a great game
by playing 23. g3. Instead 23. Qxf7 led to a winning
attack.
Below are comments from the judges on what position they ranked this
game and their reason for doing so, in parenthesis is the ranking given
by that judge and the number of points awarded for that ranking:
NM Dennis Monokroussos (11th Place: 3
points): A very interesting
game with even more interesting ideas.
Ultimately though, the players were more successful in posing
challenges than
solving them.
NM Arun Sharma (12th Place: 2 points): Greg Shahade called me some
rather inappropriate names for giving this Game of the Week originally
(and nearly fired me, but I reminded him it was really his fault for
hiring me in the first place so he realized he couldn't look like a
fool for doing that so kept me on). This game without a doubt was
exciting from the get-go, but unfortunately the result really was
mostly decided by just one blunder from the White side (who had
appeared to be winning basically the whole game prior) which of course
takes away quite a bit from the game as a whole so I had to put it down
here.
IM Greg Shahade(13th
Place: 1 point): As Arun mentioned above, I don't believe this
game was really deserving of the Game of the Week Honor. I feel that if
Kiewra finished off Pinto with 23. Qxf7, then the game would have been
a decent choice and may have even finished higher in the Game of the
Year Rankings. Honestly there wasn't that much good material in the
first week. Maybe the players were a bit nervous to start off the
season. In any case if I had to choose a game other than this one to be
Week 1 Game of the Week, I probably would have gone for IM
Kuljasevic vs IM Pruess
Perhaps it wasn't played perfectly, but it was a long and hard fight
with a lot of twists and turns, and interesting play from both sides.
GM Alex Shabalov + WFM Elizabeth Vicary (13th Place: 1 point):
