Jorge Sammour-Hasbun won the US Chess League’s Game of the Week for the second time this season thanks to his creative attacking victory against IM David Pruess of the San Francisco Mechanics.

The decision was totally unanimous and the USCL judges provided the following comments:

Greg Shahade: This week wasn’t a close decision, great game by Jorge, and flashy as well. 31. Nxe6 was a nice shot. I suspect that the judges will win the poll comfortably this week…

Arun Sharma: Though I had trouble finding five games I thought were super deserving of being my Top Five this week, first place was definitely not an issue this time. This year I feel the amount of games which have been both exciting and quite high quality has been very low, and this game definitely fit the bill for me in both regards. As he often does, in a fairly tame position Sammour-Hasbun found a very nice tactic with 31. Nxe6!, neatly crashing through Black’s position after which the g-pawn, who’s advance hadn’t seemed to accomplish much, quickly became deadly. (1st Place: 5 points)

Jonathan Hilton: Sammour-Hasbun showed tremendous foresight (or perhaps simply attacking intuition) when he played the move that launched a thousand ships — 12. Nb5!!? This move could easily be seen as a waste of time; sure, White can penetrate d6, but there is no way for the Knight to stay there. Yet on move 15, Sammour laid everything on the line with 15. f5!!?, sacrificing two pawns for what I believed at first to be a less-than-impressive attack. By move 25, ten moves later, it was unclear what White had accomplished. He’d sunk the g6 pawn into Black’s position, but all of his positional pressure came at the price of two pawns.

Yet White slowly developed his pieces, organizing, coordinating — until suddenly, it became clear Black could do nothing to stop White’s inevitable breakthrough. Perhaps Pruess had some chance to activate, to break up the position with an …e5 strike, but if so, he didn’t take it. 31. Nxe6!!, and White was winning. (1st place: 5 points)