Game of the Year: 12th Place --------------------------------------------
by League Commissioner IM Greg Shahade
--------------------------------------------
This is the
second
installment of a series of weekly articles that will determine what
game was voted as the Best Game of 2006. The only games eligible for
Game of the Year are
the thirteen "Games of the Week".
There are four judges ranking the games from 1st to 13th. If a game is
ranked as 1st place by a
judge, it receives 13 points and if it's ranked 13th place, it receives
1
point and so on. 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)
Privman
vs Krasik: Black to Move after 17. Bc3
Krasik uncorked the shocking 17....Rxe4, leading to
some exciting fireworks.
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 Arun
Sharma (8th Place: 6 points): This game caused a
lot of controversy over those watching on ICC. Centered around Black's
suprising 17... Rxe4!!, which I feel should be considered one of the
nicest moves seen this season even though there were other good
choices. What prevented me from ranking this game higher was that
despite Black's very creative middlegame play, it wasn't the main
reason of his victory as due to his error 18... Bh6+?, he actually
wound up going into an inferior endgame where he outplayed his
opponent. If only ....Re4 directly led to black winning, I would have
been much more likely to give this game a higher score.
NM
Dennis Monokroussos (12th Place: 2
points): Black’s opening play was very energetic, the rook sac
was good and the game as a whole was interesting. But there were far
too many errors, starting with the very next move after the rook sac.
IM Greg Shahade(12th
Place: 2 points): I didn't really feel like this game deserved
to win Game of the Week, however if you look at the other games from
Week 3, there wasn't any fantastic alternatives. Charbonneau
defeated Christiansen, but it was a relatively boring affair.
Perhaps Moreno
Roman's victory over Andrews deserved it, as at least the winner of
the game played quite well throughout.
