02/21/2007

Game of the Year: 5th Place
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by League Commissioner IM Greg Shahade
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  This is part 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)

5th Place: (Week 7) IM Josh Friedel (SF) vs GM Gregory Serper (SEA)   1-0


Friedel vs Serper: White to Move after 44....g5
Friedel found the nice sacrifice 45. Rexg5 hxg5
46. Rxg5 with the unstoppable threat of Rg7 followed
by Qh6 mate. Black's only defense was to sacrifice his
queen for the rook on g7, yet Serper was unable to
defend with his rook and bishop versus Friedel's
queen.



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:


GM Alex Shabalov and WFM Elizabeth Vicary (2nd Place: 12 points):  (Meatball vs Financial Genius)

  AS: Serpie is breaking the most fundamental rules in the opening. No wonder he didn't get away with it in a mere 75 moves.
  EV: A great game from Friedel. I liked the way he manuevered his knights throughout the game.


NM Arun Sharma (5th Place: 9 points): This game was definitely one of the most anticipated of the season, as everyone had been looking forward to the first matchup between San Francisco and Seattle. It was really exciting as the Mechanics trailed 2-1 with this game still in question, and the division lead was at stake. It was also a well played game, with white nursing home a small material advantage, but it didn't quite have the spark of their rematch in the SemiFinals.


IM Greg Shahade (8th place: 6 points):  I appreciate the game because it seemed as though white played quite well, however from an excitement standpoint, there were no amazing moves that really stood out to the fans. I agree with Arun that their SemiFinal rematch deserves a higher ranking in this type of competition.


NM Dennis Monokroussos (9th Place: 5 points): A clean win by Friedel, but if the names were reversed I think we'd say "yes, of course, the GM beats the IM". Impressive, but not Game of the Year.


Total Score of Friedel vs Serper: (5th place, 32 points)
 Stay tuned for 3 more installments as the field dwindles down every Wednesday and one of the games below will be the 2006 USCL Game of the Year!

Week 2: GM Pawel Blehm (BAL) vs GM Pascal Charbonneau (NY)  1/2-1/2         article
Week 4: GM Julio Becerra (MIA) vs GM Pawel Blehm (BAL)  1-0    article
Week 5: IM Lev Milman (CAR) vs GM Larry Christiansen (BOS)  0-1     article
SemiFinals: IM Josh Friedel (SF) vs GM Gregory Serper (SEA)  1-0   article


Eliminated:

5th Place (32 pts): Week 7: IM Josh Friedel (SF) vs GM Gregory Serper (SEA)   1-0    article
6th Place (31 pts): Finals: IM Josh Friedel (SF) vs GM Pascal Charbonneau (NY)   1/2-1/2    article
7th Place (31 pts): Week 8: GM Pawel Blehm (BAL) vs GM Magesh Panchanathan (DAL)  0-1    article
8th Place (27 pts): Week 9: IM Vinay Bhat (SF) vs IM Georgi Orlov (SEA)  1-0   article
9th Place (26 pts): Week 10: FM William Kelleher (BOS) vs FM Tegshsuren Enkhbat (BAL)   1-0    article
10th Place (18 pts): Week 6: Jose Cabrera (MIA) vs Michael Lee (SEA)  0-1     article
11th Place (14 pts): WildCard: FM Slava Mikhailuk (SEA) vs IM Davorin Kuljasevic (DAL)   1-0    article
12th Place (12 pts): Week 3: FM Boris Privman (NY) vs NM Ilya Krasik (BOS)  0-1  (Annotated by Ilya Krasik)     article
13th Place (7 pts): Week 1: NM Keaton Kiewra (DAL) vs NM Mark Pinto (SF)  0-1  (Annotated by NM Sharma)

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