Association of Chess Professionals

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The Association of Chess Professionals (ACP) is a not-for-profit organisation, the closest thing in existence to a trade union for professional chess players. According to Article 2 of its terms:

The association's purpose is the protection of professional chess players' rights, the practice and promotion of chess worldwide, in particular through the organisation of chess tournaments and other chess events.

As of March 2005, the ACP's President is French Grandmaster Joel Lautier. Its secretary is Bartlomiej Macieja, its Treasurer Almira Skripchenko, and its Deputy Treasurer Pavel Tregubov. Also on the ACP board are Igor Glek, Anna Hahn, Vladimir Kramnik, Peter Heine Nielsen and Yannick Pelletier. It has over two hundred other members, including such prominent players as Viswanathan Anand, Péter Lékó, and Judit Polgar, but not including Garry Kasparov. Ruslan Ponomariov and Veselin Topalov were once members, but withdrew in December 2004 saying "we disagree with the politics and most of the decisions of the ACP Board."[1]

The organisation was founded in 2003, the catalyst for its foundation being disagreement with the European Chess Union over the choice of hotel that all participants in the 2003 European Individual Chess Championship were required to stay in. It has since been involved in a number of matters relating to professional play.

The organisation has been compared by some to the Professional Chess Association, the body established by Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short as an organisation under which to play their 1993 World Championship having broken away from FIDE, the official governing body of chess. However, unlike the PCA, which was in competition with FIDE over the running of the world championship, the ACP initially stated that they "hope to work together with FIDE, as well as other international and national chess bodies" [2]. In March 2005, however, Lautier commented that "at present FIDE avoids any contact with us, does not respond to our mails, and we don't expect any positive changes of the situation." [3]

The ACP has been extremely critical of FIDE on a number of issues, including its selection of Libya as the site for the 2004 Championships (thus putting the ability of Israeli players to take part under question) and aspects relating to the contracts with players in that championship.

As well as these political activities, the ACP has organised a number of online chess tournaments (open only to its members) on the Playchess server (run by Chessbase). On July 31, 2004, at a press conference held during the Dortmund tournament, Lautier announced plans for the inaugural ACP tour in which the eight ACP members who perform best in tournaments over the course of a year (as determined by a points scoring system) will play in a final event (the ACP Masters) to determine the best player of the season [4].