2008's Greatest Chess Games

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2008's Greatest Chess Games
Compiled by iron maiden

The 5th annual chessgames.com vote for the greatest games of 2008 commenced on January 6, 2009 and continued until January 16. Kibitzers could vote for up to ten games from the year 2008, assigning a number to each of their choices, indicating which game they thought was best, second-best, and so on. Any nonvariant game of chess in the chessgames.com database, including those played under rapid, blitz, blindfold and simul conditions, could be voted for. I awarded ten points for the first choice, nine for the second, eight for the third, and so on down to the tenth game, which earned one point. The games with the most votes were inducted into this collection as chessgames.com's favorite memories of the chess year 2008.

You may notice that this collection has eleven games instead of the traditional number of ten. This is because four games ended up tied in the voting results for 8th-11th place, and rather than break the tie I made the prior decision to induct them all.

The Game of the Year: The boy done Bonn-za (74 points)
Kramnik vs Anand, 2008
(D49) Queen's Gambit Declined Semi-Slav, Meran, 41 moves, 0-1
The Knight and the nemesis (2nd place, 72 points)
Topalov vs Kramnik, 2008
(D44) Queen's Gambit Declined Semi-Slav, 45 moves, 1-0
Back rank burner (3rd place, 72 votes)
Kramnik vs Anand, 2008
(D49) Queen's Gambit Declined Semi-Slav, Meran, 35 moves, 0-1
March of the monarch (4th place, 43 points)
G Sargissian vs Grischuk, 2008
(E15) Queen's Indian, 64 moves, 1-0
Teen against Machine (5th place, 35 points)
Kramnik vs Carlsen, 2008
(A30) English, Symmetrical, 57 moves, 0-1
Birthday bash (6th place, 24 points)
Ivanchuk vs Karjakin, 2008
(B87) Sicilian, Fischer-Sozin with ...a6 and ...b5, 49 moves, 1-0
The fire of Dresden (7th place, 18 points)
Shirov vs Topalov, 2008
(B12) Caro-Kann Defense, 37 moves, 1-0
Grand Prix Legends (=8th place, 15 points)
Karjakin vs Radjabov, 2008
(B78) Sicilian, Dragon, Yugoslav Attack, 10.castle long, 52 moves, 0-1
Pins through the heart (=8th place, 15 points)
Radjabov vs Bu Xiangzhi, 2008
(D10) Queen's Gambit Declined Slav, 41 moves, 1-0
Bilbao and the slain dragon (=8th place, 15 points)
Carlsen vs Radjabov, 2008
(B78) Sicilian, Dragon, Yugoslav Attack, 10.castle long, 37 moves, 1-0
Toppling the King with a queen (=8th place, 15 points)
Anand vs Aronian, 2008
(C45) Scotch Game, 75 moves, 0-1
11 games

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