ACP Tour 2005-2006 - Report August 2005

The ACP Tour 2005-2006 started some weeks ago. Several tournaments have been played and the time has come to take a look at the first results.

Thanks to his sole victory at the Sparkassen Chess-Meeting in Dortmund and the 700 points he earned there, Arkadij Naiditsch is comfortably leading. Another strong closed event of the Summer, the GMT in Biel, was won by Boris Gelfand and Andrei Volokitin who got 320 points for their effort. By finishing second behind Luke McShane at the recent Magistral Ciutat d'Igualada, Andrei Volokitin jumped to place two of the standings.

India's current Junior World Champion Pentala Harikrishna is also amongst the early leaders thanks to his deserved win at the 2nd Sanjin Hotel Cup in Tiayuan. Here are the standings http://www.chess-players.org/eng/tour/rulss_2005/standings.html

A few very strong opens took place as well. Pavel Eljanov won in Amsterdam, while Andrei Kovalev and Mikhail Kobalja were victorious in Pardubice and Biel respectively. One should not forget the very first competition of the ACP calendar, the Championnat de Paris, which was dominated by Alberto David and Arthur Kogan.

A special mention should be made for the Mainz Ordix open. This rapid tournament, which is undoubtedly one of the strongest in the world, was won by Teimour Radjabov.

We would finally like to draw your attention to the new look of the tournaments' list on our website -
http://www.chess-players.org/eng/tour/rulss_2005/tournaments.html

The ACP Board