Week 8: Monday Prediction

Surely by now this season some of you have come to notice my impressive prediction ability this season capped last week by my 0-6 record. I will not defend my actions, in fact I place the blame on myself. Last season I was a regular watcher of the league and while I accept the high likelyhood that I was merely lucky, I did it with authority. This year I can't claim any authority, I don't watch San Francisco play live every week (sadly) and in fact quite often I don't get home until after the days' games are over. I certainly don't have time to replay them and my chess and predictions have both suffered from this overworking (the latter of course being of much greater importance). Either way, I encourage you take these predictions with an extra grain of salt.

New York Knights vs Queens Pioneers
Some fairly close matchups down the boards, I think it is again the anticipation of the league to see if Nakamura can notch his first USCL win, I think it's becoming quite a burden on him, it's difficult to imagine he would struggle this badly. I do remember a poor start to the 2006 US Championships after going into the event as the defending champion, but he did come back in a fierce rally to almost tie for first in his division (on which I believe he would have lost on tiebreaks). Maybe that's his plan here, he probably has to start soon or never. I think it'll be soon. On other boards it's hard for me to make strong statements, I can say that the Queens do have 2/3 whites on these boards where the edges are unclear. Overall I think the knights have a small edge.
NY over Queens 2.5-1.5