The Chess Mind

Milman-Burnett. This was one of my favorite games in the contest, and one I'll enjoy covering in this week's ChessVideos show. (I'll also cover the 9th place game, Friedel-Serper, a game I enjoyed far less.) This one definitely makes a pleasing aesthetic impression, one reminiscent of some of Tigran V. Petrosian's games. (Even more importantly, I've solidified my lead in the informal "Best Judge" contest, which qualifies me to win absolutely nothing.) Do have a look at that game, and tune in later in the week for the show.

Twelve down, eight to go.

The latest game to get eliminated in the U.S. Chess League's Game of the Year contest for 2007 is Josh Friedel's week 9 win over Gregory Serper, a funny game where Serper kept pushing the pawns in front of his king until he got mated. I'll cover this game in some detail on my ChessVideos show next week, together with the 8th place game, but for now you can read the judges' comments and replay the game here.

Let me add in passing that I'm apparently leading an informal judges contest, where the goal (unknown to the judges beforehand) is to have one's picks as close to the actual results as possible. This "contest" strikes me as entirely pointless at best, if only because USCL commish Greg Shahade instructed us to judge the games according to whatever criteria we wanted, making things such that there is no "right" placement for any of the games. So I'm pointing this out only because the contest's inventor, USCL blogger Arun Sharma, seems to be slightly annoyed that he's not in the lead. (Here's the link with the judges' standings after GOTY #10; my lead has increased because I picked Friedel-Serper for 9th place, while Sharma - already six points back - did not.)

(In fairness to Sharma, who isn't an official judge and whose guesses don't count, the contest is unfair to him, unless his calculations take the following reasoning into account. The point is that my guesses "skew" the results in my favor while his don't. Suppose everyone but me and Sharma vote a game for 10th place, while I put it in 5th and he puts it in 15th. To evaluate which of us is closer to the norm, either both our votes should count or neither should. Either way, the game would end up with an average rating of 10th place and we'd be equally wrong. With my vote counting but not his, however, I'm closer, as the average with my vote only is a 9th place rating - I'm two places closer.)

After a couple of weeks off from reviewing USCL's 2007 Games of the Year, my latest show on ChessVideos.tv takes a compressed look at the last three games to be eliminated. The show is free and available on-demand, right here.

We continue to mark the U.S. Chess League's countdown to the best game of their 2007 season, and this week we take our first look at the top 10. That entrant is the battle between Philadelphia IM Bryan Smith and Boston GM Eugene Perelshteyn, a Breyer Ruy where the ostensibly weaker player started off by outplaying his grandmaster opponent and finished things up with a sac and a mop-up operation. (In fact things weren't quite so simple, as I'll detail this week in a forthcoming ChessVideos program, but it'll do as an initial approximation.) You can read more about this game and replay it for yourselves, right here.

The US Chess League's countdown to the 2007 game of the year continues, with a new game eliminated each week on the way to #1. This week we're down to #11, and the game chosen was Molner-Kaufman. It was a lively French Defense with big momentum swings: first White was winning, then Black had the advantage, and then White won. It wasn't perfect, but it was very entertaining.

You can replay the game and see the judges' comments about it here.

The US Chess League's countdown to the 2007 game of the year continues, with a new game eliminated each week on the way to #1. This week we're down to #12, and the game chosen was Zilberstein-Bartholomew. As with many of the games we've seen so far, there's somewhat of a two-step flow to it: the winner undertakes the project of slowly building up the attack, and when the preconditions are in place the tactics start to fly. It's worth a look, and you can replay the game here, and see the judges' comments here.