Association of Chess Professionals

This was particularly evident with the formation of the joint ACP-FIDE panel Anti Cheating Committee[1] (renamed to Fair Play Commission in 2018[2]).

The first ACP Board started its work in 2004 with the following people: the ACP's President French Grandmaster Joël Lautier, secretary Bartłomiej Macieja, Treasurer Almira Skripchenko, Deputy Treasurer Pavel Tregubov, Board members Igor Glek, Anna Hahn, Vladimir Kramnik, Peter Heine Nielsen and Yannick Pelletier.

First members of the ACP were such prominent players as Viswanathan Anand, Péter Lékó, and Judit Polgár, but not Garry Kasparov.

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."

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).

Due to this increased influence, ACP has managed to push through many important changes in the FIDE regulations, raising the prize funds and improving the financial conditions of the professional chess players.

[5] As the first act of his presidency in December 2011 Emil Sutovsky outlined the basis of his programme, which will be centered around the fostering of the interest of chess professionals.