This article is part of a series of articles highlighting the best
games of 2005. We have taken all of the games of the week from the 2005
season. NM Arun Sharma then went through all 12 of them and has ranked
them from 1st to 12th. Criteria used for ranking in order of importance
were:
1. Level of Play
2. Excitement Factor (Were there lots of exciting sacrifices and etc)
3. Relevance towards Standings
4. Intrigue (big upset etc)
With this article we will look at the 10th thru 12th best game of
the year, and we will expand the article each week, until we reach the
number 1 game of 2005. Below are the candidates for best game of 2005:
A dominating game by Shneider who used a strong queenside initiative to
create a passed pawn which he was able to translate into a victory in
the endgame. Once again, I place this game lower than most of the
others
due to its largely one-sidedness along with the fact that it took place
during the last week between teams already out of contention.
A very good showing from Kaufman who gained an immediate advantage in
the opening and was in a winning situation very quickly. Despite
this
being from the Championship, I must not rate this game too highly as
this game was
fairly one sided. White seems completely winning after 16. Qc4!
A solid performance from Perelshteyn, but there weren't enough
fireworks for the spectators to rank this game too highly. In a
fairly normalish
looking Sicilian position, Perelshteyn found the nice blow 19. Bf4!
which
demolished Black's queenside pawns and led White to a much superior
endgame in
which Perelshteyn found 48. Bh5! which finished Black off nicely.
This game
also salvaged the draw for Boston without which they would have started
the season off on a rather sour note.
Stay tuned to find out which game has been awarded the title of
"Best Game of 2005"