Game of the Year 9th Place Critique

Well no excuse for me this week. A pick that was just plain wrong, and having thought this game had a very good shot to make the Top Five, hard to really claim I was even close. Nevertheless, I am still pleased that this game managed to beat out both Molner vs Kaufman and Smith vs Perelshteyn (the former game due to all the arguments that Greg and I had over which should have won Game of the Week in Week 9, and the latter for reasons I shall mention in FM Adamson's comment below) so I can't be too disappointed about its final placing. Let's examine what the judges said.


Robby Adamson: A very strange comment to me in his implication that it's ridiculous that this game didn't win Game of the Week. While I happen to agree with that philosophy, given his own personal rankings, him saying it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. After all, the game which beat this game out, Molner vs Kaufman, he ranked in 4th place himself (vs 3rd Place for this)! While I've stated on many an occasion that I certainly don't think that game was worthy of such a high ranking, given he felt they were so close, I really can't comprehend why he would find it ridiculous that that game happened to beat this one out for GOTW. Despite that oddity, it would be remiss of me not to note that I had a bet with Greg over whether the Friedel vs Serper or Smith vs Perelshteyn game would finish higher in this contest, and Robby's low ranking of the latter game combined with his high ranking of the former is really what won me that bet. As such, I hereby retract any past negative statements made about any of his rankings (however, I certainly don't promise not to make any future negative ones either).


Deenis Monokroussos: Not really sure what to say here, but I definitely look forward to his analysis of this game in his chess videos.


Ron Young: Once again, I'm rather dumbstruck that Ron actually talked about the game itself in some capacity, but his note does kind of surprise me as I really would have thought the "using the whole board" description was a trait exhibited far more in last week's Smith vs Perelshteyn elimination.


Alex Shabalov: Despite the fact that I feel this ranking is too low given the high quality of play which he even hints at, I like both of these nicknames too much to deride an excessive amount (plus I have plenty saved for the judge below).


Jennifer Shahade: Well, I see I have a new adversary for a judge, as Jenn really tried to cost me my bet in ranking this game so low. I must further note that I find her description of this game as lacking "flash and sparkle" to be disturbingly similar to the negative propaganda that her brother desperately tried to feed me whenever we discussed this game (one might be inclined to think that this is just an example of the "great minds think alike" phenomenon, but I tend to believe it's an example of the opposing theory, whatever that might be called). Further evidence of this is that she and her brother were the only judges to rank the Molner vs Kaufman contest higher than this game in either GOTW or GOTY!


Hopefully next week I'll return to being at least semi-correct and won't have to blast the judges quite as much!