03/7/2007

Game of the Year: 3th Place
--------------------------------------------
by League Commissioner IM Greg Shahade
--------------------------------------------
Home   Standings Games
  Schedule  Players History
 League Leaders
 Team Stats  Rules  Polls                                                                                                                     







  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)

3rd Place: IM Lev Milman (CAR) vs GM Larry Christiansen (BOS)  0-1



Milman vs Christiansen after 40...Qa3
Larry has just played ...Qa3, trapping the king in
a swarm of major pieces. Lev tried 41. bxc5 but after
...Kc7 he was forced to throw in the towel.


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 (3rd Place: 11 points):

AS: A modern chess masterpiece, most wonderful. A game in the style of me by the Shabalov wannabe from Boston.


IM Greg Shahade (4th place: 10 points): I thought it was a nice game, but definitely not enough fireworks for it to win Game of the Year. Christiansen simply outplayed Milman from a position that most of the Internet crowd thought was very favorable for white, and he did so without any obvious errors being made by his opponent. An impressive display by the legendary attacker.

  Honestly I'm somewhat surprised this game finished in the top three, despite my relatively high ranking. Amusingly only one of four judges ranked it in the top 3 (and that one judge ranked it exactly 3rd place), yet it still managed to squeak into 3rd.


NM Arun Sharma (4th Place: 10 points): This was a well played game where I felt the main charm was that it seemed that white was going to attack black's king, as it was stuck in the center. Instead black carried out a deadly attack on the seemingly sheltered white king. One detraction was that there wasn't much pre-game hype like many of the other contenders, as Boston was 4-0 going into the match and Carolina was just 1-3, and Larry was playing a lower rated opponent. However it was nice to see Larry Christiansen get at least one game of the week this season, as he was an integral part of their rise to the top of the Eastern Division.


NM Dennis Monokroussos (7th Place: 7 points): A good game by Christiansen, featuring his typical build-up attacking style. I only ranked it 7th because Milman's play seemed overly cooperative and was topped off by a pair of blunders.


Total Score of Milman vs Christiansen: (3rd place, 38 points)
 Stay tuned for the final installment as one of the two 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


Eliminated:

3rd Place (38 pts): Week 5: IM Lev Milman (CAR) vs GM Larry Christiansen (BOS)  0-1     article
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)

Click here to go back to the US Chess League homepage