Game of the Year 12th Place
Privman vs Krasik
This game contained mistakes yes, but it was not as if it was blunder-filled and the move Rxe4 was a very nice move to have on the board, I really think this really deserved some more credit in the voting. Imagine the match situation: Boston only won this match 3-1 so a loss for Krasik would have meant only a tie for the Blitz and Krasik still has the confidence to play the fantastic move Rxe4 when the consequences of a miscalculation would completely change the outcome of the match. I think it's a little strange not to take the situation in the match into serious consideration. I think Arun's ranking is probably more appropriate, a few other games were mostly given game of the week due to a few surprising moves and the comment "the technique was less than perfect, but good enough to win."
As for the lack of comments, this seems strange. How does nobody mention the importance that this game took place on board 4 in a close match between a gigantic sports rival. In the regular season the matches don't get much more exciting than New York - Boston unless San Francisco is involved and it seems overly criticizing the quality of the moves in a real game in a complex position is a little uncalled for. And where is the comment for the Shabalov + Vicary team vote? Here are a few of my (very serious) theories on what happened here:
1) Clint Ballard paid off the judges to make sure Krasik would not finish near the top, but unfortunately this was included in the comment.
2) Shahade didn't get the vote from Vicary and Shabalov in time and and decided to vote for two and figured voting for another team was enough, no need to put words in their mouth too.
3) Vicary and Shabalov decided to make genital jokes about Rxe4 and Shahade was trying to keep the comments at least PG-13.
4) To counter-act and east-coast bias in the geographical location of the judges Vicary and Shabalov decided to tank their vote on this game and explicitly mentioned this in their comment and to prevent controversy this was censored.
5) The comment reveled that it indeed takes exactly 43 licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop and Shahade decided to keep this secret to himself to try to raise money for the league with this ultra-sensitive information.
6) ???
7) Profit!
Anyways, I'd like to give a shout-out to Krasik who I met at last week's North American Open. It's always nice to meet more US Chess League personalities in real life, I hope those of you that read this blog ever will let me know what you think if you catch me at a tournament, at least those of you I don't already know are readers.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
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13 comments:
Well Josh, knowing what the exact Shabalov comment was, I can tell you that your list of seven doesn't contain the right answer so I would personally post another list they're certainly very entertaining and then you might get it right :) In any case, how about posting your own rankings? Given you were basically the authority when it came to predicting the matches, clearly your rankings would have to be accepted as the real deal rather than whatever us bagelhead (as Shankland put it) official judges come up with :)
Arun
Well Josh, knowing what the exact Shabalov comment was I have to tell you that none of your seven theories is correct so I'd suggest posting another list as they're certainly very entertaining, and then you might find the right answer :) In any case, how about posting your own rankings? After all, you were the authority when it came to predicting the matches so whatever rankings you give likely will be accepted as the real thing rather than what us bagelhead (as Shankland put it) official judges happened to come up with.
Arun
I would happily violate the binding confidentiality agreement and anonymously leak to you the contents of our comment for a mere, say, $10?! Think about it. Elizabeth.
My guess is that the Shabalov/Vicary comment was a meta-joke:
"These comments were censored...." was all they wrote.
Jason
It seems strange that those two are voting as one, two people should mean two diverse opinions, i know they are a couple right now but so what?? It seems that if you have 4 judges they should work independently and not influence each other's opinion.
Sorry about the double first post, think I double clicked or something malicious like that. In regards to Elizabeth's post, I'll note that Greg was good enough to provide me with the content of said comment, and I'd be very happy to provide it for you at a much cheaper rate than she is offering (but not going to say how much publically cause I can't have her coming back here and undercutting me like I'm doing to her).
Arun
Once again, Clint, you manage to twist a situation and insult a player that is better than you at the same time.
I'm okay with some personal attacks here as long as they're kept on-subject and light-hearted, but blatant personal attacks that are off-topic and anonymous will be censored.
The first post supposedly made by me was made by an imposter.
Josh, I would appreciate it if you deleted it and the other comments by people who believed it was me. You can check the IP address of the poster to verify this. My guess is that is was done by someone not in the Seattle area.
It sure seems that there are some out there who are quick to believe that I would make such a comment. I am not sure why, as it was Krasik who kept calling me names.
Clint
I deleted the other comment which claimed to be by you Clint. I'm torn to only allow people with a blogger account to post (which ends up being a google account which is pretty trivial) simply to avoid the problems that I've seen so far on this posting alone which is 1) people posting comments as other people and 2) people posting insults anonymously. What do people think? Would this be too much of an inconvinience to comment?
too much of an inconvenience :)
Greg
Good thing Seattle and Boston are scheduled to play next season. Should be a fun match :)
Greg
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