Saturday, October 27, 2007

Open rant at Jonathan Hilton

It has come to my attention that for the first time in USCL history,Friedel-Serper 1-0 did NOT win game of the week. The league commissioner Mr. Shahade voted this game second and clearly made a very bad call, but because it was only off by one and not such a huge offense i will let him slide, although we can hope he will exercise better judgment in the future. However, JONATHAN HILTON DESPERATELY NEEDS SOME BRAINS IN HIS NOGGAN IF HE IS TO CONTINUE BEING A GOTW JUDGE.

Jonathan has ranked every single one of Friedels losses this season quite highly, and none of them with the exception of the Milman game (even still, that is pushing it) were any kind of good quality chess. However, when josh comes up with a masterpiece like this against Serper, of course Hilton doesn't rank it at all! Instead he ranked a game first that was decided by one move. Josh specifically made sure not to blow out Serper too badly, he wanted a close encounter, and the result was a great game of fighting chess. Hilton also ranked Bhat's win third. I mean HELLO! Bhat ALWAYS wins his game and already has two gotw's under his belt! The game was not anything special, they just got an equal position where Vinay slowly outplayed his opponent and won with a tactic in the final position. The way I see it, we either have a biased judge that must be disciplined or a blithering idiot helping decide who makes big bucks. Either way, the uscl has a problem. I have nothing personal against Hilton, he is a good kid, but seriously, this is just MADNESS.

P.S. Mr shahade, i believe organizing a Friedel-Hilton boxing match would be largely appreciated in San Francisco.

4 Comments:

At 5:24 PM, Blogger Davorin said...

I completely agree with Sam's notion and I should also add that it's really surprising that none of Dallas Destiny games was awarded the game of the week so far, despite the fact that we've been playing some good quality chess this season. For instance, week 8 game Tangborn-Kuljasevic was not awarded the GOTW because one of the judges failed to consider it initially, only to agree that it deserved to be the game of the week afterwards. Pretty weird and kind of irresposible if you ask me! Of course, a lot of exciting games are played each week and it's quite understandable that the panel of judges may have a hard time determining which one is the best, but based on their choices, one can't help but think that something weird is going on.
It's not that big of a deal anyway, but I still think USCL should urge GOTW judges to take their jobs more seriously, or simply replace them with someone more competent!

 
At 6:47 PM, Blogger Elizabeth Vicary said...

I believe Todd Andrews is the guy to talk about this boxing match:

http://lizzyknowsall.blogspot.com/2007/10/ten-questions-with-tennesee-tempo.html

(last question)

 
At 8:23 PM, Blogger Jonathan Hilton said...

Although I'd be happy to take Friedel on in a martial arts match - I am a second degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do - I do know he could teach me a few things about chess!

Check out my response at my new blog,
http://judgehilton.blogspot.com/

 
At 1:47 PM, Blogger Greg Shahade said...

Hello Davorin. I didn't actually fail to consider your game. I looked at it, and somehow it just didn't strike me as being worthy of game of the week. It was one of my candidates for the final five spots and I think I eventually ranked it sixth. In retrospect I decided that it actually deserved third place on my ranking list, which would have ended up giving it first place.

I'm trying to take it as seriously as possible, but I'm only human and sometimes I make mistakes. Note that these selections are made just 24 hours after the games and that we have to analyze 24 games as well. Sorry that I failed you this time in my duties as GotW judge! I think I did a good job on the Week 9 Selections. Honestly I am only happy about my personal selections for about 4 of the 9 weeks.

 

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