Last Sunday I ran my fledgling chess club's first USCF rated tournament. We advertised a "brilliancy prize" for the best game played in the event. Now I need to figure out who to give the prize to. Please help me narrow it down!

The time control was G/45, d5. We had three rounds and eight players, so there were twelve total games played. Several of them got a bit sloppy at the end in time pressure, G/45 is pretty quick. I don't really feel that the games as played really showcase how strong the event really was (we had a 2098-rated expert, three 18xx players, and an unrated who is at least 1800+ strength). Below are all twelve games. Please take a look at them and comment on who should win the prize. Hopefully we can narrow it down to 2-4 finalists, and then I'll set up a poll. Thank you!

The criteria are not too well defined. Just "best" game. I would like to give some small level of credence to rating an tournament situation, but ultimately it's a brilliancy prize not a biggest upset prize, so it's about the objectively best chess game in the end. One other note, I *think* I got the game scores accurate in all cases, except for two games that had a couple unrecorded moves in time scramble at the end. Please let me know if anything looks wrong, though, and I'll double check the score sheet.

Round 1 Board 1
Round 1 Board 2
Round 1 Board 3
Round 1 Board 4
Round 2 Board 1
Round 2 Board 2 (White won this game on time, after a few more moves were played)
Round 2 Board 3
Round 2 Board 4
Round 3 Board 1
Round 3 Board 2
Round 3 Board 3
Round 3 Board 4

They all suck. If I would be forced to choose I guess I would pick the time win. I found that game fairly interesting.

God all of these suck under brilliancy prize criteria.

1-1 random piece hang
1-2 b4 is a hang, instead black plays a bunch of bad moves and loses fast
1-3 500 random moves missing black wins everywhere
1-4 assmaster draw
2-1 random piece hang
2-2 Had potential until white blundered game bigtime at the end (and then won on time)
2-3 .......
2-4 total tardfest
3-1 meh
3-2 random hang
3-3 technique was pretty crappy
3-4 butchered pawn ending beyond belief in a position I'd resign to my cat.

If you can give it to the game and not to one player, give it to 2-2. Nobody really deserves an individual prize, but maybe you can give it to 3-3 for being the only person who won, had to work at all, and wasn't at least -1 along the way, or give it to white in 2-2 anyway.

round 2 board 4, not even close imo.

nice sac and pretty impressive quality game for so low rated players with some good ideas for both.

lot of versatile and different concept tactically has been used in that game.

Yeah, my lesson learned as an organizer is to not offer brilliancy prizes in quick chess. And you can see why I reached out for help, nothing stands out as really even remotely brilliant. I'm leaning 2-2, it was certainly the most interesting game, and since it was the last of the round to end it had everyone crowded around watching. Anyone else have other thoughts?

do upset prizes instead

In this particular case I needed game scores, so that I could include the games in an article I'm submitting to a regional chess magazine. It's a combo "how to start a chess club" narrative and "our first tournament" recap, and its ultimate purpose is to advertise our club. So like I said, I needed game scores. Figured that offering a brilliancy prize was the best way to guarantee submissions. And it worked, I got scores for every game from the event. Unfortunately none of them was "brilliant" and now I need to figure out who wins the prize...

I haven't played through the games yet (am about to do so) but do any of the games feature a great move? Perhaps you could do a brief writeup on the game, and really emphasize and spend the majority of the time on that move? Almost make it a brilliancy move prize instead of a brilliancy game prize, just not really telling anyone.

It's all relative. People are getting too hung up on the "brilliancy" label. "Best game" or "most creative win" would be fine.

2-4 looked pretty good to me for that level.

White's totally winning and then just blunders forced mate (well, Qxe2 survives, but..) for no reason instead of Kd1.

White's 1200 playing a 1000. Blundering a forced mate is mandatory.

In that particular game white just completely missed that black had Qb5+, and so didn't realize that Kf1? loses, and Kd1 has to be played instead. Also white maintains that his bad play throughout the event (see also the WTF draw in round three) was due to his attention being diverted by the responsibilities of being organizer and TD. And white may or may not have been me...

sigh.

Awarding the prize to yourself would be brilliant. Oh, white lost that game. Never mind.

The prize is free entry to a future event, and is meant to encourage future participation (beyond the other reasons it was offered, which I discussed above). If I had a game that was a candidate I would have ruled myself out. Since I played like **** though, we don't have to worry about that

Well, after debating it with the assistant TD (the 2098) and someone else who also participated (the 1674), we have ultimately decided that since no full game was "brilliant" all the way through, we are awarding the prize to half a game. The 1018 from Rd2Bd4 is winning the prize for moves 11-18. In particular the move Qb5+ is exclam worthy at that level (not too many Class E players have the board vision to spot the idea of shifting the queen across the board like that... and in this particular game at least one Class C player 2+2 mod also did not spot it.) And the mate is nice. And it highlights the value of playing on and putting pressure on your opponent, and, like, the ephemeral nature of chess, or something. Whatever. It's kind of a cop out, but that's what we're going with.

If you annotate 10. Kd8!! with a double exclamation mark, this is a convincing brilliancy.

I don't like 10. ... Kd8: though 10. ... Kxd7 would still lose a piece after 11. Qg4+ or 11. Qb5+, at least White wouldn't have a bishop pair then So the decisive (oh wait...) tactic is 10. Bxd7+!, it seems. The mate is brilliant, though