The 1st ACP World Rapid Cup was scheduled to take place 4th to 8th January 2007 in Odessa, Ukraine. The event, organized by Bank Pivdennyi, is the final stage of the ACP Tour. The prize fund of the tournament amounts to 136,000 USD. Those who gained the right to participate in the 1st ACP World Rapid Cup are the 14 players who performed best in the ACP Tours held in 2004/2005 and 2005/2006.

The 14 players took part in the first ACP WRC: Alexander Morozevich (Russia), Peter Leko (Hungary), Boris Gelfand (Israel), Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan), Alexei Shirov (Spain), Etienne Bacrot (France), Sergey Rublevsky (Russia), Evgeny Bareev (Russia), Arkadij Naiditsch (Germany), Pentala Harikrishna (India), Ivan Sokolov (Netherlands), Victor Bologan (Moldova), Hikaru Nakamura (USA), Farrukh Amonatov (Tajikistan).

FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov took part in the opening ceremony.

The 1st ACP World Rapid Cup, organized by the Bank PIVDENNY, ended on January 8 in Londonskaya hotel in Odessa. Hungarian grandmaster Peter Leko defeated Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk in the final match. The prize fund of the Cup, which crowns the ACP Tour for the first time, equaled $136,000, of which Leko received $40,000. Grandmasters who showed best results in more than 60 tournaments in the last two seasons, were invited to participate in the tournament. The finalists of the World Cup are currently 5th (Ivanchuk) and 6th (Leko) in the official world rankings.

The World Cup became a unique event for chess of Odessa and Ukraine, and the amount of the prize fund should be sufficient for this competition to be in the top ten tournaments of the year 2007.

For the first time the tournament of the Bank PIVDENNY had live Internet relay of the games. The official website www.worldcup.pivdenny.com was attended by users from more than 100 countries. Famous grandmasters headed by Victor Korchnoi commented the games for hundreds of spectators in the hall of Londonskaya hotel.

The last day of the tournament was not limited to solving the sporting intrigue. Charity fund "Victor" organized a meeting between young chess players and the World Cup participants: autographs, questions and answers, and, of course, the play!

The closing ceremony was led by Vadim Morokhovsky, Chairman of the Bank PIVDENNY, and Pavel Tregubov, president of the Association of Chess Professionals. The tournament winner Peter Leko noted 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.

The leadership of the Bank PIVDENNY will continue supporting chess projects.