PRESS RELEASE – 27 December 2011
The ACP General Assembly voted for a strong innovation in its main governance body. The new board, which will take office as of January 1, 2012 and work for four years thereon, was in fact renewed by two thirds.
Out of the nine previous members, only Pavel Tregubov (Russia), Sergey Movsesian (Armenia) and Emil Sutovsky (Israel) are still in office as board members. Bartlomiej Macieja (Poland) and Olena Boytsun (Ukraine) are taking back office after a hiatus, while Yuri Garrett (Italy), Maria Klinova (Israel), Evgeny Naer (Russia) and Evgeny Romanov (Russia) are new to the position.
In its first meeting, the Board unanimously nominated Emil Sutovsky as President, Yuri Garrett as Board Director, Bartlomiej Macieja as General Secretary and Pavel Tregubov as Treasurer. All other Board members will be entrusted with specific tasks so as to make the cooperation as effective as possible.
As the first act of his presidency, Emil Sutovsky thanked the outgoing Board members for their contribution to the cause of professional chess and outlined the basis of his programme, which will be centered around the fostering of the interest of chess professionals. In his first round of contacts, President Sutovsky secured the interest of major partners – a contract has been already signed for the ACP Women Cup in Tbilisi (February 2012, with a prize fund of USD 40.000), and ACP is in the process of defining at least two major forthcoming chess events: the ACP Masters (with a minimum prize fund of USD 100.000, for which the ACP already has an agreement in principle) and an Internet ACP tournament. Negotiations are ongoing with the Turkish, Israeli, Azerbaijani and Ukrainian Chess Federations for staging ACP events as also with three top-100 companies for securing continuous funding to the ACP for expanding its activities. Finally, talks are ongoing for obtaining special conditions for ACP members at the forthcoming Individual European Chess Championships in Plovdid (March 19 – April 1, 2012). More on these projects shall be released by the ACP as soon as the individual deals are confirmed.
Among the initiatives that the new Board plans to take, there are four main guidelines: i) the development of a think tank for promoting professional chess; ii) the renewal of the communication strategy of the ACP, with special attention being paid to the mainstream and new media; iii) working with corporate sponsors based on the transparency and time-effective decision process of the ACP; and iv) the increase in membership and representativeness.
A restyling of the ACP website is in progress and new initiatives are announced as regards membership (joining the ACP between January 1 and April 1, 2012 shall be free of cost for one year) and publication of Position Papers.
The ACP intends, as ever before, to work closely with all relevant chess bodies and organizations, in a frank and open cooperative manner to the benefit of all chess professionals (e.g. players, organizers, arbiters, trainers, managers, publishers, journalists…).
We invite all the members of the global chess community to join us in our attempt to improve the chess world.
The ACP Board
ACP should run FIDE chess.