Gelfand Wins World Rapid Cup

The 3rd edition of the ACP World Rapid Cup recently took place in Odessa, Ukraine from 22-24 May, with Boris Gelfand (pictured) defeating Peter Svidler in a closely contested final.

The ACP (Association Of Chess Professionals) is an organisation which aims to look after the interests of professional chess players, almost akin to a trade union, and it also organises chess competitions of it's own.

The format of the World Rapid Cup was a KO with the 16 competitors playing mini-matches of 2 games in each round against their paired adversary, except the final which was over 4 games.

The time control was 20 minutes plus a 5 second increment, with tie-breaks at 3 minutes plus 2 second increment, and a final sudden death game (5 min for white, 4 min for black) if needed.

The 16-strong field included many notable names besides Gelfand and Svidler, including Jakovenko, Gashimov, Bacrot, Naiditsch and former world champion, Karpov.

Gelfand received USD 10,000 for his victory out of a total prize fund of USD 57,000. Special guest Viktor Korchnoi awarded the prize for the best game to Moiseenko for his win against Bacrot in the first round.  That game, and the third and fourth games from the final match are shown below.

All the games from the tournament are available for download here.  The official site is here, with the full results are shown here.