The Arizona Scorpion’s own IM Levon Altounian finished third overall (out of 28 games judged) in the just released Game of the Week competition for his fine effort as white against the Chicago Blaze’s IM Jan Van De Mortel. Check out the judge’s rankings at http://usclnews.blogspot.com/2008/08/week-1-game-of-week.html.
Please check out Levon’s comments on this game at http://sazchess.org/reference/palview4/games/USCL/USCL.html. Congratulations Levon!
Also, Jan was kind enough to provide his own insights to the game in the comment section of Leo’s in depth analysis of the Scorpions Week 1 encouter. Thanks Jan! http://arizonascorpions.blogspot.com/2008/08/analysis-and-summary-arizona-scorpions.html. Both Lev and Jan seem to agree in their assessment of the game.
I finished 8th overall in the voting for my win against NM John Burgess. The analysis for my game can be found at the same link.
Each week in the US Chess League (USCL), all of that week’s games are evaluated by three judges (IM Greg Shahade, NM Arum Sharma, and NM Jonathan Hilton), and at the end of the season there is a vote by a different set of judges (to avoid bias by the seemingly emotional response to games by the 3 judges – just partially kidding of course) to determine who wins Game of the Year (for those acronymistic-obsessive compulsiveOCD-driven-nutty chess fans, the abbreviation is GOTY, not to be confused with GOTW – Game of the Week). Should we introduce a new one – GOTWJs?
Not that anyone needs any additional motivation to play well, but there are a few cash prizes awarded for the best games at the end of the season (a whopping $1,000 for first!). Because I was not playing on a team in the USCL last year, I was honored to be one of the game of the year judges and it is a tough job. Even if a game doesnt win GOTW honors, it can still qualify as a wild card entry and be eligible for GOTY.
Root the Scorpions on at the Eastside Chess Club held at the Jewish Community Center this Wednesday, September 3, at 6 pm AZ time, for our Week 2 encounter against the Dallas Destiny – the 2007 Champion. The lineups for both teams will be announced Sunday evening.
Out of curiosity… what does it mean to be “just partially kidding, of course”?
Hey Elizabeth,
If the judges from GOTW were also used to judge GOTY, they might be biased to picking a game they already picked as the best, and may not be as objective toward other games (especially if they never never thought very highly of a game to begin with and are being asked to consider that game again!).
Also, when you are only judging a particular week’s games, it is easy to get caught up in a situation where something might be interesting for that week because the other games were not that interesting, but in the grand scheme of things the game may not be that impressive. Or of course, a 2nd place game in a particular week might be better than a GOTW game. I assume thats why Greg doesnt use the same judges; I think when judging a yearly competition, its best to give everyone a clean look. Also, GOTY judges have a lot more time to look over games. GOTW judges get 1 day, if that.