The closing ceremony of the 40-th Chess Olympiad which took part in Istanbul, took place on September 9 in the hall of the WOW Hotel, the place that became a warm and friendly house for many participants.

It is true that such ceremonies always attract the attention of not only spectators and players but also a wide range of Mass Media.

Karlovich: Dear ladies and gentlemen, I am extremely happy to congratulate the Russian women team as these ladies won gold medals here, in Istanbul. They have proved that they are the strongest in the world. My first question is, whether you really hoped to make it, guys?

Rublevsky: We did. However to make this true we prepared a special opening variation, tried hard and simply played well to get the result.

FONTAINE: Dear ladies and gentlemen, I’m glad to invite you to our press-conference with the members of Ukrainian Women team: Kateryna Lahno, Yanovska Inna and Zhukova Nataliya. First of all we congratulate the team with the third place in the Olympiad. What are your impressions after the today match?

LAHNO: Well, of course we are very happy, because at the start before the start of the tournament we were the 4th-rated team. We already know that we came third, but we still have the tiny chance to get the second place (because the round is not over yet), but I wouldn’t even dream of it, because the current result is very decent.

In the last round of the 40th World Chess Olympiad Armenia was matched against Hungary. Levon Aronian secured a perpetual against Peter Leko, and the other games continued.

After the time control Gabriel Sargissian drew the rook endgame against Ferenc Berkes, and Sergei Movsesian scored a crucial victory against Zoltan Almasi. Eventually Vladimir Akopian held Judit Polgar to a draw to mark the start of huge celebration for Armenian gold medal. Congratulations!

If the summary, which we have published before, caused misunderstandings we are very sorry for it as it was not our intention.

Fontaine: We start our press conference with Yuri Garrett, the board director of ACP and the first question is when was ACP founded and how many people are there in the board?

Garrett: ACP was set up in 2003 and the organization is based in Paris, in the heart of Europe and since then there were several General Assemblies, managing the organization from one General Assembly to another. The last board was elected in the end of 2011 and started to work in 2012. It is directed by Emil Sutovsky, a grandmaster from Israel.