ACP Tour 2004-2005: Final Report

ACP Tour 2004-2005: Final Report

The first ACP Tour is over. Congratulations to the winner Viswanathan Anand! The Indian star not only won by a big margin but also dominated the race thanks to an exceptional season. His 5 best results over the season bring him to 1598 points, but if we were to add the other 3 events he took part in, the total would amount to 2045 points!
Second place goes to Peter Leko (1196 out of 4 tournaments), while Boris Gelfand ended up third (916 out of only 3 events).
It was predicted that the tournaments taking place during the last period would somehow upset the standings. Still in the Top-8 on June 15th, Farukh Amonatov and Etienne Bacrot lost their place in favour of Teimour Radjabov and Ivan Sokolov. Thanks to his silver medal at the European Individual Championship and 432 points earned there, Radjabov jumped to 4th place. Ivan Sokolov's result was more modest, but the 63 points he got in Poland were still enough to reach place 8.

Final Standings of the ACP Tour 2004-2005:

1.	Anand	1598	(5)
2.	Leko	1196	(4)
3.	Gelfand	916	(3)
4.	Radjabov	884	(3)
5.	Bologan	865	(3)
6.	Kramnik	839	(4)
7.	Morozevich	709	(3)
8.	I.Sokolov	654	(4)
9.	Bacrot	612	(4)
10.	Amonatov	600	(4)

Five other tournaments were rated during this period, but they did not significantly change the standings. Congratulations to V.Anand for his win in Leon, to Z.Almasi for his victory in Paks, to V.Zakhartsov who won in Voronezh, and to K.Miton and M.Panchanathan who ended up joint winners at the World Open in Philadelphia. A special mention finally goes to Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu who won the European Individual Championship in Warsaw - Zegrze Poludniowe.

Conclusions:
This first major project of the Association has been approved and supported by tournament organizers and generated great interest among chess players. Despite long negotiations with potential partners, a sponsor for the 'Masters', the final tournament of the cycle, has not been found yet. Considering the very complicated current situation in the chess world, finding a company that would be willing to invest into a new large-scale project is no easy task. However, this quest obviously remains our priority, as well as the development of the whole ACP Tour project.

The second ACP Tour started on the 1st of July 2005. The new Regulations are published on the ACP website. We took into consideration some of the suggestions made during the first season.

With best wishes,
ACP Board