ACP Tour Report
- May 2005
The final month
of the ACP Tour is on! Things will hardly change at the very top of the
standings, since Vishy Anand seems to have secured his first place. But the race
is still open for the 8th place. It is very likely that the upcoming European
Individual Championship will bring the decision. Even lower ranked players can
make it into the top-8 in case they perform well at one of the remaining
tournaments. Will someone follow Viorel Bologan's example? By sharing first
place in Sarajevo, the Moldavian top-player managed to jump from 9th to 4th!
Looking back at his performances this year, we can only state that this place is
well-deserved. An advantage of the ACP Tour compared to the rating system is
that it quite objectively reflects the chess players' form over the whole season.
Sarajevo's
other winner Ivan Sokolov has also gained 320 points to appear on 9th place of
the standings. Here is how the top-10 looks like:
Top-10 list on
June 15th:
1. Anand 1598
2. Leko 1196
3. Gelfand 916
4. Bologan 865
5. Kramnik 839
6. Morozevich 709
7. Bacrot 612
8. Amonatov 600
9. I.Sokolov 591
10. Grischuk 567
In others
tournaments rated in the ACP Tour last month, most winners were non-ACP members.
We would like to congratulate Zviad Izoria for his win at the HB Global Chess
Challenge in Minneapolis, as well as Victor Mikhalevsky for his victory in the
open in Lake George! At the third tournament held on American soil, the Chicago
Open, four people finished first: Vadim Milov, Jaan Ehlvest, Igor Novikov and
Petr Kiriakov.
As we
mentionned already in our previous report, the organizers of Sofia declined our
invitation to be part of the ACP Tour. In view of its very high level, this
event has nevertheless been counted with a 0,5-rate. Congratulations to Veselin
Topalov for his brilliant performance!
As mentionned
earlier, the highlight of the final period will be the European Championship in
Zegrze
Poludniowe. But we'll obviously keep an eye on all other tournaments going on,
such as The World Open in Philadelphia, the open in Voronezh and several rapid
events.
The ACP Board