Dear Colleagues,
The new year brings a new period for the ACP. We will try to do and create something that so far hasn't existed in the chess world.
With the pivot to an organisation that would like to work as a think tank, we noticed that the chess world lacks a unified English-speaking discussion forum where everybody in the world can come safe in the knowledge that everything they need to find about what is happening in the chess world will be there. A forum where they will be free to express their ideas and discuss them openly with the chess public.
Our new website that is currently in the testing phase will have different sub-topics in the Forum section, (like FIDE, World Championship, ECU, ACP Tour etc.) where the public can find useful material and exchange ideas. We plan to provide content regularly to keep the public updated on everything relevant that is of interest.
We expect a lot of great ideas to come out from these discussions and our aim is to distill them and then present them to all the institutions in the chess world. We want to be the voice of the people and influence the chess world in this manner.
To complement our Forum we are also starting an ACP Twitch channel where we invite you to subscribe to. The plan for our channel is to serve as a platform for panel discussions on current and political themes. We have already scheduled our first panel discussion for this Wednesday, 19 January, at 8pm CET. The topic of the discussion is Players, Sponsors and Organisers - How to Work Together and is motivated by the recent commotion caused by the exchange between two professional players (Giri and Vidit) and the organisers of the upcoming Grand Prix, World Chess, who appeared to demand a cut of the players' private sponsors in exchange for the right of the players to show the logos of the said sponsors. World Chess denied this, but this opened up a discussion and our collaborator, prominent author and GM Daniel Gormally wrote a thought-provoking article that we published on our FB page.
These developments gave us the idea to organise a panel discussion on this topic. Our upcoming stream will be hosted by Zoe Varney, member of the English national team and will have IO Gunnar Bjornsson, WGM and IA Aleksandra Dimitrijevic and GM Daniel Gormally as guests. We would like to invite you join the discussion on our Twitch channel and post your questions in chat - it will help the discussion and lead to even better understanding of these relationships.
We have high hopes of these new development and changes in the work of the ACP. While we will continue to support our members in the usual ways (ACP prizes, ACP Tour, help with administrative issues etc.) we hope that with these new activities we will be able to give the public a strong voice that will be heard.
The more you stand with us, the stronger that voice will be. Join us and let's become stronger together.
Sincerely,
The ACP Board
