Rebirth of the ACP? (And a new organization...)
In the past few years we've rarely heard anything from the Association of Chess Professionals, but perhaps things will change a little. A new board will take office on January 1st, 2012 and with many new faces and fresh input, the organization might be up for something. In the mean time, former ACP members have founded their own organization for chess professionals.
On December 27th we received a press release from the ACP. We publish it in full:
PRESS RELEASE - 27 December 2011 The ACP General Assembly voted for a strong innovation in its main governance body. The new board, which will take office as of January 1, 2012 and work for four years thereon, was in fact renewed by two thirds. Out of the nine previous members, only Pavel Tregubov (Russia), Sergey Movsesian (Armenia) and Emil Sutovsky (Israel) are still in office as board members. Bartlomiej Macieja (Poland) and Olena Boytsun (Ukraine) are taking back office after a hiatus, while Yuri Garrett (Italy), Maria Klinova (Israel), Evgeny Naer (Russia) and Evgeny Romanov (Russia) are new to the position. In its first meeting, the Board unanimously nominated Emil Sutovsky as President, Yuri Garrett as Board Director, Bartlomiej Macieja as General Secretary and Pavel Tregubov as Treasurer. All other Board members will be entrusted with specific tasks so as to make the cooperation as effective as possible. As the first act of his presidency, Emil Sutovsky thanked the outgoing Board members for their contribution to the cause of professional chess and outlined the basis of his programme, which will be centered around the fostering of the interest of chess professionals. In his first round of contacts, President Sutovsky secured the interest of major partners - a contract has been already signed for the ACP Women Cup in Tbilisi (February 2012, with a prize fund of USD 40.000), and ACP is in the process of defining at least two major forthcoming chess events: the ACP Masters (with a minimum prize fund of USD 100.000, for which the ACP already has an agreement in principle) and an Internet ACP tournament. Negotiations are ongoing with the Turkish, Israeli, Azerbaijani and Ukrainian Chess Federations for staging ACP events as also with three top-100 companies for securing continuous funding to the ACP for expanding its activities. Finally, talks are ongoing for obtaining special conditions for ACP members at the forthcoming Individual European Chess Championships in Plovdid (March 19 - April 1, 2012). More on these projects shall be released by the ACP as soon as the individual deals are confirmed. Among the initiatives that the new Board plans to take, there are four main guidelines: i) the development of a think tank for promoting professional chess; ii) the renewal of the communication strategy of the ACP, with special attention being paid to the mainstream and new media; iii) working with corporate sponsors based on the transparency and time-effective decision process of the ACP; and iv) the increase in membership and representativeness. A restyling of the ACP website is in progress and new initiatives are announced as regards membership (joining the ACP between January 1 and April 1, 2012 shall be free of cost for one year) and publication of Position Papers. The ACP intends, as ever before, to work closely with all relevant chess bodies and organizations, in a frank and open cooperative manner to the benefit of all chess professionals (e.g. players, organizers, arbiters, trainers, managers, publishers, journalists...). We invite all the members of the global chess community to join us in our attempt to improve the chess world. The ACP Board |
Meanwhile (in fact on the same day), we received another press release from a similar organization which was recently founded. As it turns out, a few weeks after the ACP board was changed for two third, a number of people who lost their seats can now be found behind the 'Chess Professionals Union'. Their press release:
PRESS RELEASE Initiative group for creation of a new International Chess Union aimed to unite chess professionals and experts in the area of chess sports, culture, education, business. It’s not a secret for anybody that nowadays chess looses step-by-step its leadership in an area of mind sports and games regarding the level of organization and the extent of investments being inferior to the card and computer games. One of the most important reasons is the absence of the legal rights protection mechanism and the impossibility or sometimes even just lack of knowledge concerning chess players’ juridical abilities. Despite the fact that last years some attempts have been undertaken to change this state of things in chess – various public and professional chess organizations had been created – the time showed that to the point these organizations had been nonviable and directed to resolve local tasks not covering interests of all chess community. It seems the time has come to change something. We are convinced that to become an organization representing interests of wide range of chess experts it is necessary to develop the following directions: - Representation and protection of social, economic rights and interests of all chess players and chess personalities: players, chess trainers, chess teachers, chess arbiters, chess managers, chess journalists, chess businessman and others, related to creative and professional interests in the area of chess art, culture, education, sports and business; - Concrete marketing and sports projects (more details in the Program); - Increasing the importance of the cultural and educational component of chess; - Active collaboration with other mind games representatives and also mutual working out of educational program for all levels of education. It is necessary particularly: to achieve the status of state employees for chess professionals and experts, to get the right of participation in FIDE leadership elections for the representatives of chess professionals, decrease the figures of payments for rating counting and title awarding, etc. The name of the organization: International Professional Chess Union (ChessPro). Along with an official headquarters in the place of registration in one of the countries of European Union it is planned to create the representative office in Moscow – on the basis of the Chess Department of the Russian State University of Physical Education, Sports, Youth and Tourism (http://foreign.sportedu.ru), under collaboration with numerous partners. Dear colleagues, all chess friends, we hope for your understanding and support! We invite you to join a trade union of chess players! The more members will be the more preferences will receive - both economic, and social. General meeting of members of trade union will take place in the Internet in the beginning of 2012 and it will elect Union’s Council for the next two years. We invite everybody of You who would like to work in the Union we invite to propose yourselves as a candidate into the Council, as well as various commissions of the Union. Yuri Avebakh (Russia) Grandmaster, International Arbiter, FIDE Vice-President 1972-75 2011 Decemer 27th Temporary web-site address of the Union in the Internet: www.chess-events.org/en_US/ChessPro.html Contact: unionchess@gmail.com |
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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