For the first time since it has been founded, the Association of Chess Professionals let its voice to be heard. It organized the Internet blitz tournament that could have been declared the world championship judging by its composition.It took part in the Chess Base playing zone at Playchess.com. The chess elite including Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand, Leko, Topalov and Shirov did not participate in the competition for the "grassroots", which became quite a tradition for them. An explanation is simple - the competition did not match their plans; as long as Association was created not for the top players. It is rather a trade union for the chess professionals who are slightly inferior to the elite in the purely chess aspect and significantly inferior to the top players in the financial aspect.

Only members of ACP were admitted to the competition. They were: a four times Russia champion Peter Svidler; Alexander Grischuk, who had just won a super tournament in Poikovsky; Evgeny Bareev; a prominent blitz expert (both Internet and face-to-face) Alexey Dreev; Viorel Bologan… The cunning Zhang Zhong, the president of Association Loel Lautier, the very strong Brazilian Vescovi also played there and many others too.

The site worldchessrating.com was presented there almost completely, including Sergey Shipov, Vladimir Belov, Svetlana Matveeva and Maxim Notkin.

The prize fund was not especially large this time - $5000 total, the winners of quarter finals obtained $300, semi-final winners $500, the second prize was $1000 and the first one was $1500. Well, a five-place figure would better fit a competition that collected those players…

The tournament was very "human" by its mood. The respected grandmaster admitted mistakes that appeared unbelievable. Even the winner of competition could not avoid the confusion and blundered a mate in one to Lputian! One should note nevertheless that in the final knock out where the born sprinters left, there were very few mistakes.

It all started with four round robin elimination tournaments. First four places in each one qualified for the final. The time control was 4+1 in qualifiers and 5+1 in the knock out. The one second increment was sufficient to checkmate the lonely king in time or to hold the drawing rook endgame with pawns on one flank.

Many players were not prepared for the specific of the Internet chess. The three Russian players suffered badly from a poor connection - Kharlov, Timofeev and the young Sergey Kariakin. And Evgeny Bareev demonstrated a poor command of … the mouse!

Final results

1/8 final:

ј final:

Ѕ final:

Final: