Game of the Year: 4th Place

02/28/2007

Game of the Year: 4th 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)

4th Place: (SemiFinals) IM Josh Friedel (SF) vs GM Gregory Serper (SEA) 1-0

Friedel vs Serper: White to move after 22...Bxb2
IM Friedel found a powerful blow to help propel
San Francisco into the USCL Finals, as he uncorked
23. Rf7!. Serper succumbed to the attack in just six
more moves.

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 (2nd Place: 12 points): This game was the complete package to me. It was dramatic, well played, included some cute tactics and occured in an extremely important match. I could have easily given this game the top ranking, but unfortunately I could only choose one.

NM Dennis Monokroussos (2nd Place: 12 points): Serper's 20...Nxe5 was a little helpful and 24. Qxb4 was an easier win, but overall it's an impressive attacking win by Friedel, rounded off with the showy moves 23. Rf7! and 29. g7!

IM Greg Shahade (5th place: 9 points): A nice game by Friedel but I felt it was a bit too quick and one sided to merit a top three ranking. It's sad for Friedel to finish outside of the prizes by his games coming in 6th, 5th and 4th place.

GM Alex Shabalov and WFM Elizabeth Vicary (10th Place: 4 points): (rematch: Meatball vs Financial Genius)

AS: Meatball is playing like he's 2900. I only saw Kasparov winning in such a manner before and now we have another person playing such powerful chess. Time for America embrace its new hope, future hall of famer, Josh Meatball Friedel. But this game is not as impressive as the first one, clearly Serpie has turned into a client of the meatball.

EV: I don't understand why you keep calling Josh "meatball"

AS: There's a Russian word "frikadella", meaning meatball. Sounds similar to Friedel

EV: Do all of the Russians call him meatball?

AS: Most of them, yeah.

Total Score of Friedel vs Serper (semifinals): (4th place, 37 points)

Stay tuned for the final two installments as 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

Eliminated:

4th Place (37 pts): SemiFinals: IM Josh Friedel (SF) vs GM Gregory Serper (SEA) 1-0   article
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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