

Accordingly, no match on this list has a margin of victory above two, and all but one is a draw, went to some kind of overtime, or was won by the narrowest margin possible. It's nearly impossible for either player to play so well and so creatively that their match can appear on this list if it's a blowout, or even a comfortable victory. With that in mind, here are the general criteria I'm using:

Restricting this list to competitive matches, apart from being unavoidable, probably makes sense anyway because the stakes of a match is part of its greatness. But we have a robust record of most public competitions: thousands of competitive matches have been logged, parsed, and analyzed, and hundreds have been cast. Right off the bat, we can assume any number of tremendous matches, featuring incredible plays and dramatic turns, have been played privately, which means we'll never know about them. Putting together a list of the greatest SpyParty matches of all time is challenging.
