ACP Golden Classic Tournament
A new tournament has been announced by the Association of Chess Professionals (ACP) at short notice with an interesting format which takes chess 'back to the future'.
The ACP Golden Classic will take place in Amsterdam from 14-22 July alongside the 2012 Dutch Championships. The invited field of seven is an interesting mix of players, but the twist is a time control which hasn't been used for decades: 40 moves in 2½ hours followed by...adjournment!
Adjournment of chess games for resumption another day died out with the advent of strong computer chess programs, which might be consulted by players during the adjournment, so this is an interesting experiment. However, the games will not be FIDE rated.
The players are:
- Vassily Ivanchuk (UKR, 2764)
- Gata Kamsky (USA, 2741)
- Baadur Jobava (GEO, 2721)
- Krishnan Sasikiran (IND, 2720)
- Le Quang Liem (VIE, 2703)
- Emil Sutovsky (ISR, 2687)
- Anna Muzychuk (SLO, 2598)
The organisers claim the re-introduction of adjournments for the competition should "provide an occasion for producing highly spectacular and imaginative chess, by giving the seven gladiators the most important ingredient needed for exploiting their skills and fantasy: time to think".
ACP Board Director Yuri Garrett added: "Hopefully the formula of the event should finally present chess lovers worldwide with a selection of high-level endgames and not only with opening duels, something which the ACP thinks could be very beneficial to chess."
Gimmick or great idea? Have your say in the comments!
More information is available at the official website.
The venue: Amsterdam's Science Park
