Nine GMs and three ladies

After the very exciting ACP Inaugural (78 participants, 54 GMs, 22 rated over 2600) and the first Women's Internet Tournament, the ACP is staging a third Internet tournament for its members. It is sponsored by ChinaCom and will be hosted on the Playchess.com server from May 31 to June 5th.

Round two report

Group 2, Tuesday, 01st June, 22.00 CEST (GMT +2)
Tournament Director: Holger Lieske

The second round started punctually, ten minutes after 10 p.m. server time. There were eleven players, because Vladimir Potkin had to cancel his appearance due to health reasons. He may get another chance on Thursday.

After six rounds Fressinet was in the lead with five points. The two ladies were unfortunately already at the bottom of the table. In round eight Jan Gustafsson from Germany took over the lead, after ten rounds it was Fressinet again. At half-time the scores were Fressinet 7,5, Gustafsson and Vaisser 7, Zarnicki 6, Deviatkin und Charbonneau 5,5, Avrukh 5, Skripchenko 4,5, Shomoev 4, Fernandez 2,5 und Veroci 0,5 points.

After a ten-minute pause the second round began with fresh energy. In round 16 we had to install a second short break to allow Pablo Zarnicki to cure his lag by switching to a different dial-in provider. One round later six players were in the lead with half a point separating them. In the end there were three players in equal second place. In the playoffs ended at 4:27 in the morning – two hours later for the Russian kibitzers. The final qualifiers were Vaisser, Fressinet and Gustafsson.

This is the final standing in the second qualifier:

• Here are all the games played in the second round

Group 3, Wednesday, 02nd June, 16.00 CEST (GMT +2)
Tournament Director: Andrea Natoli

Links

• Round one report
• ACP Tournament home page
• Playchess.com information and client download
• ChinaCom home page