Dear friends,
Here’s a review of our recent activities:
Cooperation with possibly the strongest open in Europe this summer, the Najdorf Memorial - ACP Open in Warsaw, that was won by our Premium Member Kacper Piorun. The tournament saw a big number of ACP Premiums who received excellent conditions and special prizes - donated by the ACP. We hope to be able to continue our cooperation with the organisers for the years to come.
The traditional Poikovsky tournament (for information in English you can check here), with which we have established good cooperation in the last three years, receiving wild cards ever since, was won by none other but ACP President GM Emil Sutovsky, on a tie-break with another Premium, GM Evgeny Najer. Congratulations to both players for an outstanding performance and compliments to the organisers for yet another first-rate tournament. We are delighted to confirm that our cooperation will continue in 2018 as well as the organisers agreed to offer a wild card to the ACP Tour qualifier again.
Our cooperation with the tournament with longest tradition in the world, the Tata Steel in Wijk aan Zee will continue in 2018. We will have one wild card in group A, one wild card in group B and one veteran place in group B. We are grateful to the organisers for having trust in our collaboration!
While we are at the topic of our cooperation with the major tournaments, we can announce that next year we will again have spots for the Gibraltar Chess Festival.
And last, but surely, not least, Vassily Ivanchuk got the ACP wild card for the World Cup starting in Tbilisi thanks to his high position in the ACP Tour 2016.
The European ACP Women’s Rapid and Blitz Championship 2017 will take place from October 20-24 in the Novotel Hotel in Monaco. Our fruitful cooperation with ECU and the organisers led to an event on a stellar location with superb conditions and improved prize-fund. We are proud to be able to support women chess as well - ACP has donated 5000 Euro towards the prizes for this event.
But we also don't forget about men – in the European Individual Championship in Minsk (June), we had 6000 Euro in prizes exclusively to ACP Premium members.
The Veteran Program in cooperation with FIDE continued this year. For the fourth year running, six distinguished veterans got the award. It was a bit lower this year, but still, the amount of 3.333 Euro paid to each veteran was rather significant. We are happy that for another year we managed to help those who need our help. help. Awardees for 2017 are Abram Khasin (Germany), Eugenio Torre (Philippines), Alexander Vaisman (Ukraine), William Lombardy (USA), Tamar Khmiadashvili (Georgia), Valery Asrian (Russia).
Finally, we are expecting good news about new cooperations with the three major tournaments, and we hope to be able to announce it soon.
The ACP Board