JOEL LAUTIER’S PRESS STATEMENT IN DORTMUND, 31st JULY 2004
Dear Chess Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The aim of today’s press conference is to announce and present before you a new concept for tournament chess – the ACP Tour. If successfully implemented, the ACP is convinced this new enterprise will change the face of professional chess for years to come.
Until now, a major defect in the organization of today’s top-level chess has been the lack of an integrated system of tournaments, as it exists in all major individual sports. Whether it be tennis, golf or Formula 1 racing, a clear set of rules, uniting all important competitions in the course of a year, forms the backbone of the sporting season. This has made these sports more interesting to follow for a larger audience, and ultimately, commercially successful. In order to promote chess on a greater scale, the creation of an ACP Tour has therefore become a top priority for us.
I will expose a summary of the rules and mention only the most significant parts. The full text of the rules will be distributed to all journalists present and put up on the ACP website (www.chess-players.org) in the very next days.
The ACP Tour is a tournament circuit which regroups strong international individual events during a one-year chess season. This means that tournaments held according to different formats, either round-robins, swiss systems or knock-out events, will all be included, as long as their average strength is higher than an elo rating of 2575. Determining an average rating for round-robins is easy enough, but how precisely this is done for larger events such as swiss systems or knock-out tournaments is described in the regulations.
Events played at both classical and rapid time-controls are counted, albeit with an inferior coefficient for rapid events compared to classical ones. All the above implies that blitz tournaments, team competitions, national championships and insufficiently strong individual tournaments will not be part of the ACP Tour.
Players taking part in events of the Tour gain points according to a ranking system devised by the ACP. The first ACP Tour takes place from the 1st of July 2004 until the 30th of June 2005. Once the season is over, a given number of best players are qualified for a final event, called the ACP Masters. The winner of the ACP Masters shall be declared the best chess player of the season according to the ACP.
A complete list of tournaments included in the ACP Tour will be published on our website and updated as the season unfolds. Likewise, updated players’ standings will be published on the 15th of every month during the whole season.
It should be noted that only ACP members are eligible for qualification in the ACP Masters event. A player has to be an ACP member for both 2004 and 2005, in order to have his results taken into account.
For those players who are not yet ACP members in 2004, they may apply for membership before the 15th of November 2004. Past this date, the results of players who are not members will not be counted for the 1st ACP Tour.
At the end of the season, the sum of the best five performances in ACP tournaments will be calculated for each ACP member. The eight players who have scored the highest number of ACP points are qualified for the Masters.
The ACP Masters will be held over approximately two weeks, between September and December 2005. The ACP Board will consider adding a very limited number of players to the eight qualifiers from the Tour, by granting them wild-cards. This will only be done if such a measure conditions the sponsorship of the event. However, whenever possible, the ACP Board will give preference to a tournament format comprising only the eight qualifiers from the ACP Tour.
The exact format and prize-fund are currently being discussed with interested sponsors. All relevant information will be published on our website in due time.
In a nutshell, this is the general description of how the ACP Tour will function.
As you can see, there are several advantages to having such a system uniting major chess competitions. To start with, you create a sense of unity by establishing a clear calendar of events. The impact of each local event is enhanced by the fact that it belongs to a worldwide circuit and results achieved in one tournament has an effect on the whole chess season. The stronger the tournament, the bigger the effect, hence organizers are naturally stimulated to improve their tournaments from one year to the other. More importantly, open and rapid tournaments will, for the first time, be counted alongside classical round-robins. For numerous players, the benefits of this improvement are obvious, since invitations to closed events are by nature exclusive and only a limited number of players have access to these events. Swiss systems, on the other hand, are open to all, therefore the number of candidates for qualification to the Masters increases significantly.
Another positive effect is that good results are emphasized and poor ones ignored. Contrary to the current elo rating system, where a participant is sanctioned when playing below expectations and must, as a result, be careful in his choice of tournaments, the ACP points system rewards players for their activity and ambitious play. Since one excellent result and two bad ones will still earn you more points than three average results, taking risks becomes the recommended approach. This should bring more excitement to our sport where until now, elite tournaments have sometimes produced disappointing results for the fans as the players were being too cautious.
So far, organizers around the world have responded very positively to the ACP Tour. For the single month of July, seven tournaments have already been registered and more are signing up. At the moment, the complete list of ACP events for July includes three round-robin GM tournaments – Biel (Switzerland), Taiyuan (China) and Dortmund (Germany), and four open tournaments – Paris (France), Amsterdam (Holland), Biel (Switzerland) and Pardubice (Czech Republic).
Organizers of all major events are invited to contact ACP Board Member Pavel Tregubov (gmtregubov@hotmail.com), who is in charge of the ACP Tour, if they wish to join. We are informed of most events in the calendar but it makes our task easier if organizers contact us, in order to include their tournaments in advance.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have helped with the project. Besides Pavel Tregubov, who has been the chief designer of the complete rules, mention must be made of Grandmasters Miguel Illescas and Sergey Shipov, as well as International Arbiter Eduard Dubov, who have suggested valuable ideas that were used in our system. The ACP Board would also like to thank Dr Valery Golubenko and Vladimir Bazhenov and his hard-working team for helping out with the administrative work.
In closing, I would like to give you a foretaste of how the ACP Tour results will look like at the end of the season. Using our freshly crafted ACP Points System, we have computed the results of the top 12 international events for the first half of the year 2004. Based on these calculations, eight players would have qualified for the Masters, in the following order: Vishy Anand, Sergey Rublevsky, Vladimir Kramnik, Peter Leko, Shakhryar Mamedyarov, Gary Kasparov, Alexander Grischuk and Nigel Short. The sample of tournaments used here is not large enough, nonetheless, one can see some interesting trends: the top four rated players during this period (Kasparov, Anand, Kramnik and Leko) made it to the final, together with three players who mainly obtained their qualification through strong performances in open tournaments (Rublevsky, Mamedyarov and Short). This is precisely what the ACP Tour aims to achieve: to give a fair chance to players who perform well, regardless of their invitations to elite tournaments.
Thank you for your attention.
Rules for the ACP Tour 2004-2005
I. Purpose
The ACP Tour is a tournament circuit set up by the ACP (Association of Chess Professionals), which aims to regroup all important tournaments in the world, during a one-year chess season. Players taking part in these events will gain points according to a ranking system devised by the ACP. Once the season is over, a given number of best players are qualified for a final event, called the ACP Masters. The winner of the ACP Masters shall be declared the best chess player of the season according to the ACP.
II. Dates
The first ACP Tour takes place from the 1st of July 2004 until the 30th of June 2005. A tournament is eligible for the 1st ACP Tour if the date of its first round is included in this time span.
III. Tournaments
1. The ACP Tour shall include only
strong international individual tournaments, the method used in determining
their strength is exposed below, see paragraph IV entitled “ACP Points
System”. Events played at both classical and rapid time-controls will be
counted, albeit with an inferior coefficient for rapid events compared to
classical ones. Classical events are those where a player has at least 90
minutes (regardless of possible time increments) to complete the game. Rapid
events are those where a player has at least 15 minutes (regardless of possible
time increments) to complete the game. This means that blitz tournaments, team
competitions, national championships and insufficiently strong individual
tournaments will not be part of the ACP Tour.
2. The events counted in
the ACP Tour can be held according to four possible formats: round-robin
tournaments (RR), Swiss systems (Opens), knock-out tournaments (KO) and the
Dortmund system (DS).
3. The ACP Board will consider including in the
ACP Tour all tournaments of Level E and above (the equivalent of FIDE Category
14 and above, as exposed below). As soon as such a tournament is officially
announced, the ACP Board will contact the organizers and propose them to be
included in the ACP Tour. If the organizers agree to be fully part of the ACP
Tour, their tournament will be counted according to the ACP Points System. In
case the organizers decline the proposal, tournaments of level A or B will be
counted anyway in the ACP Tour, however the number of ACP points distributed in
these events will be divided by two, while tournaments of level C, D or E will
not be counted in the ACP Tour. The rationale behind this important rule is the
following: the ACP Board has estimated that players taking part in very strong
tournaments (above level C), whose organizers do not wish to enter the ACP
Tour, should not be completely penalized by not being able to score any ACP
points at all. On the other hand, the ACP wants to encourage those organizers
who support the ACP Tour, hence the difference in the points distribution.
4. A complete list of tournaments included in the ACP Tour will be
published on the ACP website (www.chess-players.org) and updated as the season unfolds. Since tournaments are
sometimes announced at a short notice before they begin, the ACP Board may not
always obtain an answer from the organizers in time. Therefore, for the first
season, it is allowed for some tournaments to be officially announced as part
of the ACP Tour once they have already started, considering this is the first
time such a circuit is put in place. The criteria for eligibility in the ACP
Tour are known in advance (e.g. all tournaments of level E and higher),
therefore players are able to plan their events. In the following editions of
the ACP Tour, a minimal time notice before the tournament begins will be
established. If a tournament organizer fails to announce his participation in
the ACP Tour before the notice expires, his tournament will not be counted in
the ACP Tour with a full coefficient.
5. The decision to include a
tournament before its beginning in the ACP Tour is made by the ACP Board, based
on the information it has about the forthcoming event. If an event turns out to
be weaker than level E (this may happen with any format in case a player
forfeits at the last moment), the ACP Board will still grant the event the
minimal status of level E.
6. The ACP Board reserves itself the right
to refuse counting a tournament, in case the results appear particularly
suspicious. This will avoid pre-arranged tournaments (such have existed in the
past) influencing the final players’ rankings.
7. In the event of
circumstances unforeseen in the rules, the ACP Board shall decide on the matter
at hand. Decisions from the ACP Board are final.
8. The present rules
apply for the first ACP Tour, they may be amended for future editions of the
ACP Tour with the aim of improving the circuit’s attractiveness.
IV. ACP Points System
1. The tournaments of the
ACP Tour fall into 6 different levels according to their strength (R):
Level R
1) E 2576-2600
2) D 2601-2625
3) C 2626-2650
4) B
2651-2675
5) A 2676 and over
6) ACP Grand Slam
Rapid
R is determined as follows:
- for RR and DS
tournaments
R = Ra,
where Ra = average elo rating
of all participants ;
- for KO tournaments
R =
(2xR1+R2) / 3
where R1 - average elo rating of the top half in the starting list,
R2 - average elo rating of the bottom half in the starting list;- for Open tournaments
R = (3xR1+2xR2+R3) / 6 + 50,
where R1 - average elo rating of top 10 players in the starting list,
R2 - average elo rating of the next 10 players, from 11 to 20, in the starting list,
R3 - average elo rating of the next 10 players, from 21 to 30, in the starting list,
if the total number of players in the tournament is over 90;
and R1 - average elo rating of top 1/9 part of all players in the starting list,
R2 - average elo rating of the next 1/9 part of all players in the starting list,
R3 - average elo rating of the next 1/9 part of all players in the starting list,
if the total number of players in the tournament is 90 or less.
2. Within one level, ACP points are distributed using three different coefficients, according to the type of tournament. In the ascending order of their coefficient, the three types of tournaments are:- Rapid tournaments
- Grand Slam Rapid tournaments
- Classical tournaments
3. For a detailed presentation of Grand Slam Rapid events, see Annex 1.
For the detailed tables of the ACP Points System, see Annex 2.
For an example of calculation using the ACP Points System, based on the first semester of 2004, see Annex 3.
4. Updated players’ rankings will be published on the ACP website and shall appear on the 15th of every month during the whole season.
V. End of season and qualification to the ACP Masters
1. Only ACP members are eligible for participation in the ACP Masters event. A player has to be an ACP member for both 2004 and 2005 in order to have his results counted in the first ACP Tour.
2. For those players who are not yet ACP members in 2004, they may apply for membership before the 15th of November 2004. Past this date, the results of players who are not members will not be counted for the 1st ACP Tour.
3. All ACP members will have to renew their membership in 2005, in order to have their results taken into account for the ACP Tour. The deadline for membership renewal is the 15th of March 2005.
4. At the end of the season, the sum of the best five performances in tournaments of the ACP Tour will be calculated for each ACP member. The eight players who have scored the highest number of ACP points are qualified for the ACP Masters.
5. In case of a tie for a qualifying place, the sum of the best four performances will be used, and so on until a difference is obtained. The ACP Board will work out further tie-breaking rules to provide for cases where this rule is not enough to determine a qualifier. These supplementary rules will be announced before the end of 2004.
VI. The ACP Masters
1. The ACP Masters will be held over approximately two weeks, between September and December 2005.
2. The ACP Board will consider adding a very limited number of players to the eight qualifiers from the ACP Tour, by granting them wild-cards. This will only be done if such a measure will condition the sponsorship of the event. However, whenever possible, the ACP Board will give preference to a tournament format comprising only the eight qualifiers from the ACP Tour.
3. The exact format and prize-fund are currently being discussed with interested sponsors. All relevant information will be published on the ACP website in due time.
ACP Board
Contact information:
GM Pavel Tregubov
phone: +33-6-72 38 69 68
e-mail: gmtregubov@hotmail.com
© 2004 Association of Chess Professionals. All Rights Reserved.