Game of the Year 20th Place Critique

Once again, since I'm not a GOTY judge, it seems reasonably appropriate for me to jump in each week and give my impressions about the selection the judges happened to make and their comments on the selection.

I should note first off how my predictions have started off with a bang, not only predicting the place of this game correctly but also its number of points exactly! (I mention this not only to gloat but in response to Mr. Anonymous's comment about all my picks being wrong. I would use Elizabeth Vicary's patented in your face line here, but given that I don't know what Mr. Anonymous's face even looks like, I better not take the chance).

Although I did predict this game's placing and points exactly, I must confess I didn't anticipate it happening in exactly this fashion as my feeling would be that a couple of the judges would wrestle between putting this game and Friedel vs Milman in last place (just as myself and FM Braden Bournival did), and that it would manage to finagle two 19th place votes in that fashion (I must say I'm rather curious as to which game Jennifer Shahade picked lower than this one other than the aforementioned one).

I'll reiterate that I was a bit surprised by some of this game's commentary/rankings and here were some of my reactions (keep in mind I've been given tremendous leeway to be as harsh as possible):


Jennifer Shahade: What? Jenn really respects this game being picked a Wildcard? If she really respects this game's inclusion, I fear she might lose all HER respect as a judge from the get-go.


Alex Shabalov: Huh? That's it? No nicknames or anything? How boring! I mean I didn't expect nicknames for everyone, but for a game like this I at least expected a comment as juicy as the one he made on the Privman vs Krasik game last year. There he at least said some stuff about ... err wait it was censored wasn't it? Ok, never mind!


Ron Young: Wow. The way he says "It's not about winning or losing, it's about playing the game" is really quite eloquent. I don't know what Ron Young does, but he likely should look into becoming a kindergarten teacher. I mean that's where they first start teaching that concept right?


Stay tuned until next week when we announce the 19th place game, and I once again critique the judges' performance!