Thursday, December 4, 2008

Game of the Year Wildcards



As the end of the season (at least the truly relevant part!) is only a couple of days away, it's time again to think about the main off season attraction, the Game of the Year (GOTY) Contest. The contest will mostly function in the same fashion as last year: again there will be five different judges (none of us GOTW judges, which I'm sure will make the general masses very happy), and once again the prizes for GOTY will be much better than the general GOTW prizes, with $500 going to the top game.

The main difference will be, based on popular demand, the contest will take place much more speedily this year, not nearly the six months that it look last season as we will be cutting it down to between one and two months starting in early January. Hopefully that's short enough to keep everyone energized about the contest.

And once again, in addition to the thirteen GOTWs throughout the season, there will be seven Wildcard games chosen by the three GOTW judges which will be added to the GOTWs to have twenty games in the contest. We would like to hear all nominations/opinions about games that people feel are definitely worthy of being in the GOTY contest. Given all the ribbing we took during the season for making terrible picks basically every week, it can only stand to reason that many people must have plenty of better picks in mind which would be worthy GOTY entrants. So all of you out there (you know who you are!), please let us know how we can semi-rectify our mistakes by putting some good contenders into the GOTY contest!


*** Edit *** In response to Ilya Krasik's comment below, we have listed the links for all the GOTW articles for your convenience. This will help you take a quick look at all games that have received any votes in the GOTW contest.


Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

Week 9

Week 10

Quarterfinals

Semifinals

Finals

5 comments:

Ilya said...

Shoulnt there be a list of all the games to choose from, including round numbers. This makes the whole process less random and of course easier to recall a particular game. Glad to hear you got new judges for this contest, I think it will neccesary to take a fresh look at these games.

Greg Shahade said...

Hi, I provided links at the end of the article for quick browsing of key games. Hope that helps!

Rihel said...

Just from memory of the Boston Blitz games, I thought Esserman-Bonin was an odd and interesting game. But the one I really remember is Sammour-Hasbun vs. Kudrin. Kudrin played just so flawlessly in that one that it was beautiful to watch.

Anonymous said...

Esserman-Bonin is pretty flawed. But what about Esserman-Schneider from the Finals? Isn't that start to finish a clean game from Marc with some visually pleasing sacs thrown in (three if you count the queen sac at the end).

Greg Shahade said...

Sorry to break the news to you but while we would still love to hear your opinions on WildCard games, they will no longer influence us as the games have already been decided. They will be announced daily after the All Star Teams.