Wildcard Game #1

Wildcard #1: NM Eric Rosen (CHC) vs Alex Guo (SEA) 0-1


Greg Shahade: It was very close between this and another game for me, and I suspect my other pick may finish higher in the GOTY rankings - assuming someone else doesn't steal it from me in the next five selections! But something about this game was really special to me though. First of all, you have two guys playing on Board Four, and one of them makes this extremely mature and unforced Petrosian-esque exchange sacrifice with 19... Rd5. Then the final combination with sacrificing on h3 was quite beautiful and required a full ten moves before Black put the finishing touch on the combination, and all of it was played with Black having not very much time left on his clock. I don't know if Black's position was objectively great after Rd5, but it certainly caused some very real practical problems. Together with the nice combination to finish the game off, and this being between the two lowest rated players in the match, meant that I personally prefer this game to most every other game that failed to win Game of the Week in 2010.