1/24/2007

Game of the Year: 9th Place
--------------------------------------------
by League Commissioner IM Greg Shahade
--------------------------------------------
Home   Standings Games
  Schedule  Players History
 League Leaders
 Team Stats  Rules  Polls                                                                                                                     







  This is part of a series of weekly articles that will determine what game was voted as the Best Game of 2006. The only games eligible for Game of the Year are the thirteen "Games of the Week". There are four judges ranking the games from 1st to 13th. If a game is ranked as 1st place by a judge, it receives 13 points and if it's ranked 13th place, it receives 1 point and so on. If there is a tie, whichever game had the highest individual ranking will win on tiebreak. Thus if one game is ranked 1st by 2 judges, and another game is ranked 1st only by one judge, the one that is ranked 1st by more judges is awarded the higher position.

 The four judges are:

IM Greg Shahade (USCL Commissioner)
NM Arun Sharma
NM Dennis Monokroussos (Regular commentator for ChessBase.com)
GM Alex Shabalov+WFM Elizabeth Vicary (These two worked as a team to determine their rankings)

9th Place: FM William Kelleher (BOS) vs FM Tegshsuren Enkhbat (BAL)


Kelleher-Enkhbat: White to move after 27...Kh7
White found the nice sacrifice 28. Rxh5! gxh5 29. Qxh5
...Bh6 30. Bf7 which should lead to a win for white, although
black sped up the process by playing 30...Re6 allowing
31. Qg6 checkmate


Below are comments from the judges on what position they ranked this game and their reason for doing so, in parenthesis is the ranking given by that judge and the number of points awarded for that ranking:


NM Dennis Monokroussos (5th Place: 9 pts): Kelleher's aggression and Enkhbat's defense were nicely balanced until the latter missed 27...Be6. The conclusion was short but attractive.


NM Arun Sharma (6th Place: 8 points): This game had a great conclusion as it seemed that white had little or no real attack, when suddenly Kelleher launched a brutal sacrificial attack that tore about black's defenses. The only thing that took away from this game was that even though it gave Boston the match, they had already clinched their division and so it had no bearing on their playoff situation. It did however eliminate the 2005 Champions, the Baltimore Kingfishers, from the playoffs.


GM Alex Shabalov + WFM Elizabeth Vicary (9th place: 5 pts): 
Alex: "the former US ambassador to FIDE teaches his younger opponent a valuable lesson about attacking chess"

Elizabeth: (ed - Her comments on this game were so nonsensical that the USCL administrators nearly
censored them. In the end we have decided to include them below.)

EV: "This game looks similar to a dream I had last night about a horse and a real estate agent."


IM Greg Shahade (10th place: 4 pts): I thought it was a good game, but nothing incredible. Also the final tactic was not extremely complicated, and was made even easier when Enkhbat walked into a mate in one instead of forcing Kelleher to work for it. Honestly I thought that Kelleher's earlier win against Larry Kaufman was a nicer game. I think that if you are a chess coach it's an especially good game to show your students (perhaps the best of the season), as it was a crystal clear demonstration of how to play both with and against an isolated pawn, and a good example of how bishops of opposite colors accentuate the attack.  (This page will read incorrectly with Internet Explorer. Please use Firefox for best results while surfing www.uschessleague.com)


Total Score of Kelleher vs Enkhbat: (9th Place, 26 points)
 Stay tuned for 7 more installments as the field dwindles down every Wednesday, as one of the games below will be the 2006 USCL Game of the Year!

Week 2: GM Pawel Blehm (BAL) vs GM Pascal Charbonneau (NY)  1/2-1/2         article
Week 4: GM Julio Becerra (MIA) vs GM Pawel Blehm (BAL)  1-0    article
Week 5: IM Lev Milman (CAR) vs GM Larry Christiansen (BOS)  0-1     article
Week 7: IM Josh Friedel (SF) vs GM Gregory Serper (SEA)  1-0   article
Week 8: GM Pawel Blehm (BAL) vs GM Magesh Panchanathan (DAL)  0-1    article
Week 9: IM Vinay Bhat (SF) vs IM Georgi Orlov (SEA)  1-0   article
SemiFinals: IM Josh Friedel (SF) vs GM Gregory Serper (SEA)   1-0    article
Finals: IM Josh Friedel (SF) vs GM Pascal Charbonneau (NY)   1/2-1/2    article


Eliminated:

9th Place (26 pts): Week 10: FM William Kelleher (BOS) vs FM Tegshsuren Enkhbat (BAL)   1-0    article
10th Place (18 pts): Week 6: Jose Cabrera (MIA) vs Michael Lee (SEA)  0-1     article
11th Place (14 pts): WildCard: FM Slava Mikhailuk (SEA) vs IM Davorin Kuljasevic (DAL)   1-0    article
12th Place (12 pts): Week 3: FM Boris Privman (NY) vs NM Ilya Krasik (BOS)  0-1  (Annotated by Ilya Krasik)     article
13th Place (7 pts): Week 1: NM Keaton Kiewra (DAL) vs NM Mark Pinto (SF)  0-1  (Annotated by NM Sharma)

Click here to go back to the US Chess League homepage