SPARKASSEN
CHESS-MEETING
2004
22
July to 1 August 2004
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If you've not been living in a cave you will know that India's Vishy Anand
won the event, beating Vladimir Kramnik in the tiebreak of the final. Peter
Svidler did the same to Peter Leko in their match for third place. You will
find a complete list of all reports carried by the ChessBase news page to cover
the tournament below.

On the penultimate day in Dortmund the first game of the final between Vishy
Anand and Vladimir Kramnik was ceremoniously started, as is often done in such
cases, by a well-known public personality. Except here it was a colleague and
sometimes Kramnik second, Joel Lautier. As president of the Association
of Chess Professionals Joel has achieved celebrity status. Well, at least
there was no problem on his moving the wrong pawn or making an illegal move.
And also we love the look on Vlady's face in the picture above.

After the ceremonious pushing of the e-pawn for Anand Joel Lautier held a
press conference on the plans of the professional chess organisation to stage
an ACP Tour, similar to the system that exists in all major individual sports.
The ACP Tour will be a tournament circuit which regroups strong international
individual events during a one-year chess season. Only tournaments with an
average rating of 2575 or higher will be counted.

Chess journalists and players listen attentively
Players taking part in events of the Tour gain points according to a ranking
system devised by the ACP. The first ACP Tour takes place from the 1st of July
2004 until the 30th of June 2005. Once the season is over, a given number of
best players are qualified for a final event, called the ACP Masters. The winner
of the ACP Masters shall be declared the best chess player of the season according
to the ACP. Only ACP members are eligible to play in the ACP Masters.
- The full text of Joel Lautier's statement is given below.
Farewell pictorial report

Dortmund was hot, and many locals had better things to do than play or watch
chess

Outdoor blitz on the free day (Svidler, Bologan and Naiditsch)

Visitors get a chance to take a thorough thrashing from world-class players

The organisers (left Carsten Hensel, 2nd from right Gerd Kolbe) in great spirits

Bee without a sting: actually a bee mimic fly that joins in your coffee break

Peter Leko arrives for the penultimate round in a chauffeured limousine

The youngest participant Sergey Karjakin gets the same treatment

Watch it, Vladimir! You can break a leg getting to your game in time

Peter Svidler (left) on foot, carrying photographic equipment for journalists
Frederic Friedel and Olena Boytsun

Chess art on display in Dortmund

Pictures showing male and female human chess sets

Spectators in the State Theatre waiting for the action to start

Vladimir Kramnik preparing to do battle with Vishy Anand in the final regular
game in this tournament (it ended in a draw)

Anand ponders the black side of his Sicilian Taimanov

Bologan and the Boy: GM Viorel Bologan vs 14-year-old Sergey Karjakin

The Ukraines: journalist Olena Boytsun and chess mom Tatiana Karjakina

On the wrong side of the camera: Olena caught by rookie photographer Sergey
Karjakin

Everybody's favourite: chess wife Aruna Anand in the press centre

The prize giving ceremony with Spiderman topicality? The town hall in Dortmund

Wives and in-laws (right: the Leko clan) wait for the ceremony to begin

Old friends: Vladimir Kramnik and Peter Svidler in serious discourse

Sergey Karjakin and Arkadij Naiditsch (right: arbiter Dr. Andrzej Filipowicz)

Vishy Anand takes first, Vladimir Kramnik must for once be satisfied with a
Dortmund second

All together now: the full Super-GM group pose for a final farewell picture
(click to enlarge)
Pictures by Jeroen van den Belt, Frederic Friedel
and Olena Boytsun
ChessBase reports
Dortmund
Sparkassen Chess-Meeting 2004
21.04.2004 The
strongest tournament in Germany is the Chess-Meeting in Dortmund. This
year it will be held from July 22 to August 1 and features Anand, Kramnik,
Leko, Svidler, Rublevsky, Bologan, Karjakin and Naiditsch. Here's the
information you need to prepare for Dortmund
2004
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Dortmund
R2: Anand wins heavyweight bout
24.07.2004 The
gloves came off today in Dortmund, but the only fighter to land a knock-out
blow was Vishy Anand. He beat Peter Svidler in a fantastic display of
tightrope calculation to take the lead in Group 1. Kramnik-Leko was an
interesting draw, as were the other two games. 14-year-old Karjakin again
showed his toughness. Full report with games,
results and pictures.
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Dortmund
R3: Svidler strikes back
24.07.2004 If
there's anything scarier than a super-GM it's a motivated super-GM wanting
to come back after a loss. That's what Germany's Arkady Naiditsch had
to face today when he sat down across from Peter Svidler. The four-time
Russian champ would not be denied. Group 2 kept its 100% draw quotient.
Report,
analysis, and photos.
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Dortmund
R4: Kramnik almost Karjaked
25.07.2004 Today
the tournament's young guns took their turn with white against legends
Vishy Anand and Vlady Kramnik. Arkady Naiditsch played to win versus
Anand, while 14-year-old Sergey Karjakin came oh-so-close to beating
the world champion in a wild game that lasted 86 moves. We bring you
some remarkable annotations of this remarkable
game.
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Dortmund
R5: Anand and Svidler make their moves
26.07.2004 Would
somebody in Group 1 go wake up the guys in Group 2? Anand and Svidler
beat Rublevsky and Naiditsch while Group 2 was again all draws. Where
do you go for analysis when the #2 and #3 players in the world are in
action? To #1, of course! We also bring you a behind-the-scenes pictorial
report by Olena Boytsun
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Dortmund
Semis 1: Semifinals begin with draws
30.07.2004 The
preliminaries are over and the mini-match phase has begun. Anand played
a short draw against Leko. Svidler drew against Kramnik after suffering
for a long time in the Grunfeld. In the consolation tourney for 5th-8th
Naiditsch won his second straight game by doing what Kramnik and Leko
could not. He beat Karjakin. Games
and report.
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Dortmund
Semis 2: Anand and Kramnik reach final
30.07.2004 It
hasn't exactly followed an exciting script, but in true Hollywood fashion
we get a happy ending anyway. Both semifinal games were drawn. Anand-Leko
and Kramnik-Svidler both drew the rapid games and went to blitz tiebreaks.
The world's #2 and #3 will face off in the final starting Saturday. Report
and photos.
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Dortmund
Final 1: Battle Royal!
01.08.2004 Vishy
Anand was closing in for the kill but Vlady Kramnik had been saving his
best for last. The first game of the final was drawn after a sensational
defense by Kramnik. The only win of the day was scored by Naiditsch,
his fourth in a row. The event concludes Sunday. Report,
photos, and analysis
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Dortmund
concludes: Vishy Anand Victorious
01.08.2004 Anand
picked up his first Dortmund trophy by crushing Vladimir Kramnik's Sicilian
in their second rapid tiebreak game. It was a draw-filled tournament
but in the end it found a deserving winner and the four top seeds on
top. Svidler downed Leko in rapids to take third place. Naiditsch and
Bologan won their consolation matches. Games
and report.
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Joel Lautier's Press Statement in Dortmund, 31st
JULY 2004
Dear Chess Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The aim of today's press conference is to announce and present before you
a new concept for tournament chess - the ACP Tour. If successfully implemented,
the ACP is convinced this new enterprise will change the face of professional
chess for years to come.
Until now, a major defect in the organization of today's top-level chess has
been the lack of an integrated system of tournaments, as it exists in all major
individual sports. Whether it be tennis, golf or Formula 1 racing, a clear
set of rules, uniting all important competitions in the course of a year, forms
the backbone of the sporting season. This has made these sports more interesting
to follow for a larger audience, and ultimately, commercially successful. In
order to promote chess on a greater scale, the creation of an ACP Tour has
therefore become a top priority for us.
I will expose a summary of the rules and mention only the most significant
parts. The full text of the rules will be distributed to all journalists present
and put up on the ACP
website.
The ACP Tour is a tournament circuit which regroups strong international individual
events during a one-year chess season. This means that tournaments held according
to different formats, either round-robins, swiss systems or knock-out events,
will all be included, as long as their average strength is higher than an elo
rating of 2575. Determining an average rating for round-robins is easy enough,
but how precisely this is done for larger events such as swiss systems or knock-out
tournaments is described in the regulations.
Events played at both classical and rapid time-controls are counted, albeit
with an inferior coefficient for rapid events compared to classical ones. All
the above implies that blitz tournaments, team competitions, national championships
and insufficiently strong individual tournaments will not be part of the ACP
Tour.
Players taking part in events of the Tour gain points according to a ranking
system devised by the ACP. The first ACP Tour takes place from the 1st of July
2004 until the 30th of June 2005. Once the season is over, a given number of
best players are qualified for a final event, called the ACP Masters. The winner
of the ACP Masters shall be declared the best chess player of the season according
to the ACP.
A complete list of tournaments included in the ACP Tour will be published
on our website and updated as the season unfolds. Likewise, updated players'
standings will be published on the 15th of every month during the whole season.
It should be noted that only ACP members are eligible for qualification in
the ACP Masters event. A player has to be an ACP member for both 2004 and 2005,
in order to have his results taken into account.
For those players who are not yet ACP members in 2004, they may apply for
membership before the 15th of November 2004. Past this date, the results of
players who are not members will not be counted for the 1st ACP Tour.
At the end of the season, the sum of the best five performances in ACP tournaments
will be calculated for each ACP member. The eight players who have scored the
highest number of ACP points are qualified for the Masters.
The ACP Masters will be held over approximately two weeks, between September
and December 2005. The ACP Board will consider adding a very limited number
of players to the eight qualifiers from the Tour, by granting them wild-cards.
This will only be done if such a measure conditions the sponsorship of the
event. However, whenever possible, the ACP Board will give preference to a
tournament format comprising only the eight qualifiers from the ACP Tour.
The exact format and prize-fund are currently being discussed with interested
sponsors. All relevant information will be published on our website in due
time.
In a nutshell, this is the general description of how the ACP Tour will function.
As you can see, there are several advantages to having such a system uniting
major chess competitions. To start with, you create a sense of unity by establishing
a clear calendar of events. The impact of each local event is enhanced by the
fact that it belongs to a worldwide circuit and results achieved in one tournament
has an effect on the whole chess season. The stronger the tournament, the bigger
the effect, hence organizers are naturally stimulated to improve their tournaments
from one year to the other. More importantly, open and rapid tournaments will,
for the first time, be counted alongside classical round-robins. For numerous
players, the benefits of this improvement are obvious, since invitations to
closed events are by nature exclusive and only a limited number of players
have access to these events. Swiss systems, on the other hand, are open to
all, therefore the number of candidates for qualification to the Masters increases
significantly.
Another positive effect is that good results are emphasized and poor ones
ignored. Contrary to the current elo rating system, where a participant is
sanctioned when playing below expectations and must, as a result, be careful
in his choice of tournaments, the ACP points system rewards players for their
activity and ambitious play. Since one excellent result and two bad ones will
still earn you more points than three average results, taking risks becomes
the recommended approach. This should bring more excitement to our sport where
until now, elite tournaments have sometimes produced disappointing results
for the fans as the players were being too cautious.
So far, organizers around the world have responded very positively to the
ACP Tour. For the single month of July, seven tournaments have already been
registered and more are signing up. At the moment, the complete list of ACP
events for July includes three round-robin GM tournaments - Biel (Switzerland),
Taiyuan (China) and Dortmund (Germany), and four open tournaments - Paris (France),
Amsterdam (Holland), Biel (Switzerland) and Pardubice (Czech Republic).
Organizers of all major events are invited to contact ACP Board Member Pavel
Tregubov (gmtregubov@hotmail.com), who is in charge of the ACP Tour, if they
wish to join. We are informed of most events in the calendar but it makes our
task easier if organizers contact us, in order to include their tournaments
in advance.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have helped with
the project. Besides Pavel Tregubov, who has been the chief designer of the
complete rules, mention must be made of Grandmasters Miguel Illescas and Sergey
Shipov, as well as International Arbiter Eduard Dubov, who have suggested valuable
ideas that were used in our system. The ACP Board would also like to thank
Dr Valery Golubenko and Vladimir Bazhenov and his hard-working team for helping
out with the administrative work.
In closing, I would like to give you a foretaste of how the ACP Tour results
will look like at the end of the season. Using our freshly crafted ACP Points
System, we have computed the results of the top 12 international events for
the first half of the year 2004. Based on these calculations, eight players
would have qualified for the Masters, in the following order: Vishy Anand,
Sergey Rublevsky, Vladimir Kramnik, Peter Leko, Shakhryar Mamedyarov, Gary
Kasparov, Alexander Grischuk and Nigel Short. The sample of tournaments used
here is not large enough, nonetheless, one can see some interesting trends:
the top four rated players during this period (Kasparov, Anand, Kramnik and
Leko) made it to the final, together with three players who mainly obtained
their qualification through strong performances in open tournaments (Rublevsky,
Mamedyarov and Short). This is precisely what the ACP Tour aims to achieve:
to give a fair chance to players who perform well, regardless of their invitations
to elite tournaments.
Thank you for your attention.