Dear Members,
First of all we would like to congratulate our Premium Member GM Gawain Jones, an ACP wild card, on winning the Challengers Group in Wijk aan Zee, thus qualifying for the Masters next year. Well done, Gawain!
Our cooperation with Tata Steel continues, and soon we will be announcing the wild cards procedure for the 2018 edition.
The cooperation with the Gibraltar Tradewise Chess Festival keeps going from strength to strength, and we will continue and expand it as well. This year’s tournament saw a dozens of ACP members taking part, and ACP Premium Hikaru Nakamura winning it for the third time running. Congratulations, Hikaru! GM Daniel Fridman won a 560 GBP special ACP prize.
We also have several announcements to make regarding our continuous work to provide improved conditions for our members.
The European- ACP Women Individual Rapid Chess Championship is scheduled to take place on October 21-22 this year in the Novotel Hotel in Monaco. We are proud to have secured such a prestigious venue for the event and working together with the ECU and Tournament Director Jean Michel Rapaire, ACP is adding 5000 Eur in prizes reserved for our Premium Members. These prizes are in addition to the event’s regular prize fund. We also provide free accommodation for 5-6 players based on the ACP Tour standings on August 1. You can find all the details here.
The cooperation with ECU is expanding, and as we already announced earlier, there will be special prizes for ACP Premiums in the Individual European Championship: 6000 EUR in the open section (Minsk, May 29– June 10) and 5000 EUR for the women’s tournament (Riga, April 10–23).
Our work to bring more opens in our ACP Tour resulted in cooperation with the Llucmajor Open. This open takes place on the Mallorca island and Llucmajor is a suburb of the capital Palma. The dates are May 13 (day of the blitz, first round is on 14) to 21 and we are adding 3000 EUR for our Premium Members above the regular prize fund. Special conditions for our Premium Members with 2600+ include full board in single room, travel expenses and pocket money. ACP Premium Members with rating below 2600 will receive half board in double room. For the time being there are 30 places, so if you would like to play please contact us at secretary@chessprofessionals.org and yg@chessprofessionals.org – based on the ACP Tour March 2 standings we will allocate the conditions accordingly. The official site with the tournament regulations can be found here.
Last year’s cooperation with the Najdorf Memorial in Warsaw was a success and both parties are pleased to continue it. The tournament will take place from July 8 to 17 and will be one of the strongest opens in the World this summer, with a prize fund of 30 000 EUR, out of which 20 000 EUR for the A Tournament. All of 20 ACP Premiums will receive special conditions (single room, pocket money and travel expenses depending on rating) and we will publish the list of the ACP special prizes later on.
One of our most prominent wild cards, the player to participate in the traditional Poikovsky tournament, will soon be announced as it will be based on the ACP Tour standings as of March 2.
Also, we are confirming ACP wild cards in two Opens in Italy: Porto Mannu (June 3-10 – http://portomannu.caissa.it/en) and Bergamo (July 14-16 – http://bergamo.caissa.it/en). Both tournaments are offering one spot with full board in single room and pocket money. Wild cards will be assigned on March 31. If you are interested, please contact yg@chessprofessionals.org on or before March 17.
Before wrapping up, we wish to inform ACP Members that the ACP is always active in its paramount role of protecting chess professionals. This time we took a strong stand in support of GM Zhang Zhong and WGM Li Rioufan, who are being denied their rightful opportunity to play in the Zonal tournament in the Philippines by their own Singapore Chess Federation. Following the failure of the negotiations promoted by ACP President Sutovsky, the ACP Board decided to fight hard to try to restore their rights, by issuing an open letter. Since the tournament begins on February 24, we need to act fast. The ACP incourages its members to read the letter and speak up in favour of their Singaporean colleagues.
Lastly, we also wish to remind you about the deadline, March 1, to renew your ACP Membership. With many ACP tournaments coming up now is the time to become a Premium Member! As you already know, you can use our PayPal address (paypal@chessprofessionals.org) or a bank transfer – you can find all the information on our Registration webpage here.
Wishing you well,
The ACP Board