I WON a BRILLIANCY PRIZE for chess!

Last week, I was the happy recipient of a very unique chess prize: A chess brilliancy. A brilliancy prize is an esteemed accomplishment for any chess player. It is recognition that the game (or move) you played was truly brilliant and worth celebrating. In my case, my brilliancy prize came from playing in one of AlphaChess's classical 5-round weekend tournaments held in Potters Bar every couple of months:

A modern example of a brilliancy prize: Alexei Shirov won a nice brilliancy prize in 2020 for his online game (Covid was floating around then...) against Danyyil Dvirnyy. The full article about the game, you can find here: https://en.chessbase.com/post/alexei-shirov-wins-gazprom-brilliancy-prize:

An example with a lovely queen sacrifice from Alexei Shirov after an earlier novelty from him as black.

The concept of a brilliancy prize dates back to 1876. According to a book by Fred Reinfeld:

Brilliancy prizes have been awarded since 1876 for match or tournament games that contain especially original and imaginative combinations. The first brilliancy prize for a tournament game was awarded during a competition in New York in 1876, while the first brilliancy prize for a match game was given to Wilhelm Steinitz for the eighth game of his world championship match against Chigorin in 1889.

The Tournament

It was fair to say however that my performance in this tournament was far from "brilliant." In the first game, I dwarfed my underrated junior opponent but poorly defended an assault on a queenside where my king resided before getting executed in the middle of the board:

A bad start...

Due to how the swiss pairings operated, I then got two easy pairings with two more junior players where I managed to get some quick wins. On 2/3 after the first day, I continued the upward momentum and secured my 3rd win in what would become my brilliancy game! However, after soaring with euphoria from the triumph, like Icarus, I plummeted quickly as I had a rude awakening in the final game against the leader. After a good initial opening position, I played the wrong move in a combination leading to me losing a whole piece and, in a rather cruel fashion, the rest of the game. From brilliancy to a rather middling performance of 3/5 - Not worthy of someone who was seeded 1st at the start of this tournament... 

Yet this 4th game, I will remember fondly... It was a weird game. Both of us maneuvering for what felt like an eternity before a slow crescendo into a brutal combination. I felt proud of the ending but unsure if I played the game too well and whether I would get shouted at by the computer at the end... As I turned on the review feature on chess.com, I prepared for the worst... thoughts scrambled around my mind like planes in an aerial dogfight. "Maybe I played bad but opponent just played a lot worse" said my intrusive, negative thoughts as they echoed around my brain. Slowly the game review went to work. The percentage bar moved. 10%. 20%. 21%... Gosh why is the review function so slow on my computer... 25%. 57%. Finally some progress! 45%... I spoke too soon... 100%:

Cheers Ben! 

91.5% is far from immortal status but I was happy nonetheless with Ben's thoughts on my game.

The Brilliancy competition

Before I go into my game, I think it is worth looking at my competition from this event. In total there were 16 submissions from three different sections of the competition: U2400, U1800 and U1550 each hoping to be crowned the inaugural winner. 

Honourable Mention – Merle

The honourable mention went to a lovely tactical finish by Merle.

The judges praised the game for combining several familiar tactical themes into one elegant sequence:

"Thematic deflection idea for a very pretty checkmate. White has found strong concepts here above her level—merging thematic ideas of the fork on c7 with a nice revealed attack on the a4-e8 diagonal, with a cute puzzle-book-esque mate in one with Qd7++ at the end."

Third Place – Ben

Third place was awarded to Ben for an ambitious attacking game played in AlphaChess's May tournament.

One of the judges—a strong young Candidate Master—commented:

"Ben demonstrated some interesting ideas to get the opponent out of theory early which paid off, bamboozling Black. Kudos to White for orchestrating a clinical attack after the preparatory move 11.Qe1 and punishing Black's impulsive queen development."

Second Place – Mikhail

Second place went to Mikhail for a wonderfully coordinated kingside attack.

The judges described the game as follows:

"Attack is built up very principled. White is clearly disciplined, knowing when to transpose favourably in the Stonewall-type structure with 12.f4 which engines either love or hate. The attack was found and delivered quickly and clinically, and there was a tactic-book-worthy finish with Qh8++."

First Place – My Game

To my surprise, my own game was selected as the winner of AlphaChess's first ever Brilliancy Prize.

The judges wrote:

"This game was played very nicely. White finds a cure for the boredom in the position—there's a paradigm shift from quiet positional improvements to exploding open the a-file. The checkmating pattern is rather pretty although 32.Rxb7!! would have been one move quicker and also beautiful. It's a nice all-round game with a lovely pattern at the end, where Andrew took down an opponent of a similar calibre to himself in clinical fashion."

Final Thoughts

Congratulations to everyone who submitted their games and thanks to AlphaChess for organising such an enjoyable competition. Hopefully this becomes a regular feature of their classical tournaments in the future.

If you'd like to see all of the combinations discussed in this article, along with full analysis of each game, I've made a YouTube video breaking them all down move by move.

Thanks for reading, and good luck in your own games—you never know, your next combination might just be worthy of a brilliancy prize!

If you'd like to play in one of AlphaChess's excellent classical tournaments, visit: https://alphachess.co.uk