ACP Golden Classic Underway
The ACP Golden Classic is underway in Amsterdam. The tournament runs from 14-22 July alongside the 2012 Dutch Championships at the Amsterdam Science Park.
The field of seven is an interesting mix of players, but the event has attracted more attention for its unusual time control: 40 moves in 2½ hours followed by...adjournment!
On resumption the players get an extra hour for 16 moves, followed by 15 minutes plus a 30 second increment for the rest of the game.
Adjournment of chess games for later resumption 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. The prize fund is 35,000 USD.
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 first round had plenty of action and all 3 games were decisive within the first 40 moves, so there have been no adjournments - yet!
Gata Kamsky defeated Le Quang Liem
.
Anna Muzychuk beat Krishnan Sasikiran
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."
More information is available at the official website.
The venue: Amsterdam's Science Park
