24th ICT Acropolis 2009

10th to 18th August 2009
Chalkida – Greece
BULLETIN 1

PRESS RELEASE – ROUND 1

With the participation of 27 Grandmasters, 19 International Masters, 11 FIDE Masters, 10 Women Grandmasters, 8 Women International Masters, 2 Women FIDE Masters and many other strong chess-players from 24 countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Belarus, Bulgaria, England, Georgia, Greece, India, Israel, Italia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, FYROM, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Slovenia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela) the 24th ICT Acropolis 2009 finally begun.

On Monday, August 10th, 100 chess-players started their round 1 games the beautiful town of Chalkida (around 70 km north of Athens) that will last for nine days, until August 18th, .

This year’s Acropolis ICT is a co-organisation of the Greek Chess Federation and the Chalkida Chess Academy ‘Palamedes of Evia’, sponsored by the Greek Ministry of Tourism and the Greek National Tourism Organisation (EOT), the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Greek General Secretariat of Sports, the Region of Attica, the Region of Sterea Ellada, the Prefecture of Evia, the Chalkida Municipality, the TEDK N. Evias, the Football Games Prognosis Organisation (OPAP), the Chalkida Sports Organisation and the ‘Chalkis’ AVEE.

Parallel with the Acropolis ICT, one more open tournament for players under 2200 FIDE rating will take place, on the same dates and on the same time-schedule. 77 participants have already been registered.

Unfortunately the tournament started with a sad incident – a well-known figure in Greek chess, Nikolaos Karapanos passed away due to a heart attack. The incident took place during his game with Dan Zoler – the later tried his best to keep him in life but in vain…

As Nikolaos was my long-time good friend I do not feel like commenting anything else about this round and the only annotated game today will be his life’s last effort.

Of course Nikolaos will not ‘continue’ playing, but he will be always in our heart and mind. His opponent, Dan Zoler, decided to withdraw as he could no longer feel like playing chess…

Press Officer
GM Efstratios Grivas

ANNOUNCEMENT

The Organizing Committee of the 24th International Chess Tournament ‘Acropolis 2009’ mourns the sudden loss of the Greek chess player Nikolaos Karapanos, who was participating in the tournament, and expresses its condolences to the family of the deceased.

Due to this sad event, the Organizing Committee has decided the postponement of the second (2nd) round, which was scheduled for Tuesday, August 11th (17:30). The tournament schedule is thus changed as follows:

2nd round Wednesday, August 12th 17:30
3rd round Thursday, August 13th 10:00
4th round Thursday, August 13th 18:00
The rest of the schedule remains as is. The 2nd round pairings will be published at Tuesday, August 11th, at 14:00.