Game of the Year 12th Place

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.