Thanet players with long memories will remember there used to be a Best Game Prize. This was a competition run towards the end of the season whereby anyone who had played what he thought was a particularly fine game could send it anonymously to the league secretary who would gather all the entries – usually about six – and make copies to distribute to the various clubs in the league for members to discuss and vote on during a club night. Clubs would then place the games in order, send their results to the secretary and the scores were then added up.  The winner would be revealed at the league AGM, given his prize and, although this I don’t remember, would then be invited to go through the game to those assembled.   The competition gradually faded out owing to a combination of factors: the usual lack of interest, the unwillingness of some clubs to give up an evening or even part of an evening to go through the games and, of course, the games were not completely anonymous as those who had submitted entries could not really comment on their own games.

However, in the digital age, it is to be hoped that these problems can be overcome and therefore it has been decided to revive the Best Game Prize with immediate effect. David Williams has agreed to ‘host’ the games on the Thanet website and anyone in the Thanet Chess League who has played a notable game this season considered worthy of winning the Best Game Prize is invited to send the game to David and he will publish all those he receives at the end of the season.  He has asked for games to be in pgn form but if you are unsure about that, a game typed out (correctly!) in algebraic notation should suffice. The difference now is that the games can be played at your leisure on your computer and the only thing to be decided is whether individuals send their results or we continue to vote as clubs.

In the meantime, if you have played a particularly outstanding game this season – preferably not one submitted to this site for Game of the Week! – send it to David Williams whose email address is dgw757@yahoo.co.uk.  More information is on the Thanet site and while you are there, you might like to read James Essinger’s interesting article, reprinted from Chess magazine, about chess generally and a recent game of his against Bob Pooley.

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