Leko grabs 1st ACP Rapid Chess Cup

Peter Leko has won the 1st ACP Rapid Chess Cup. The tournament, a milestone for the Association of Chess Professionals, was held from the 4th till the 8th of January in the Londonskaya Hotel in Odessa, Ukraine. Leko defeated Vassily Ivanchuk in the final and in doing so, assured himself of $ 40.000.

The organizers can look back at a great event. The games were live transmitted on the internet and in Odessa, Viktor Korchnoi (back in the top 100 of the FIDE-rating list!) was there to comment on the games. Furthermore, the tournament had a fantastic website, where a lot of reports with pictures were published daily, but there was also a link to commentary by GM Sergei Shipov (unfortunately only in Russian) and players’ ‘blogs’. And you could watch some videos there - better said: there were links to YouTube where the videos are in the open to be enjoyed. And so we can show them here too!

Bactor-Bologan

Morozevich-Harikrishna

A true joy for every chess fan, this tournament website. And so Peter Leko was right when during the closing ceremony he said that “the main common interest of the world’s strongest players is carrying out tournaments similar to the World Rapid Cup in caliber and level of organization.”

RESULTS

Ivan Sokolov         – Peter Leko           0,5-1,5
Sergey Rublevsky     – Arkadij Naiditsch    1,5-0,5
Ilya Smirin          - Alexei Shirov        0,5-1,5
Boris Gelfand        - Hikaru Nakamura        2-0
Pentala Harikrishna  - Alexander Morozevich   2-3
Evgeny Bareev        - Teimour Radjabov     0,5-1,5
Viorel Bologan       - Etienne Bacrot         2-3
Vassily Ivanchuk     - Farrukh Amonatov       2-0

Quarterfinals

Peter Leko           – Sergey Rublevsky       2-0
Alexei Shirov        – Boris Gelfand        0,5-1,5
Alexander Morozevich – Teimour Radjabov     0,5-1,5
Etienne Bacrot       – Vassily Ivanchuk     0,5-1,5

Semifinals

Peter Leko           – Boris Gelfand          3-2
Teimour Radjabov     – Vassily Ivanchuk       0-2

Final 

Peter Leko           – Vassily Ivanchuk     2,5-1,5

The games can be downloaded as PGN here. The decisive game: