Elsewhere on the Web : FIDE World Championship - Veselin Topalov, New World Chess Champion!
Saturday October 15, 2005
Congratulations to the new FIDE World Chess Champion,
Veselin Topalov
of Bulgaria, winner of San Luis, Argentina! After cruising through the first half of the eight-player event with a blistering +6-0=1 score, Topalov coasted in the second half with +0-0=7. The only undefeated participant, he finished 1.5 points ahead of Viswanathan Anand and Peter Svidler.
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Long a member of the world's chess elite, Topalov has been a World Championship contender since 1993.
Topalov's first run for the World Championship was at the FIDE Interzonal, Biel, Switzerland, July 1993. He finished in the bottom half of the 73-player event with a score of +4-6=3. In December of the same year, he finished in the top half of the 54-player PCA Qualifying Tournament, Groningen, Netherlands (+2-1=8), 1.5 points behind Michael Adams and Anand.
Between 1997 and 2004, he competed in all five FIDE Knockout Championships, where his best result was elimination in the semifinal round of the Tripoli event, July 2004. After drawing the eventual winner Rustam Kasimdzhanov in the four standard games, he lost both rapidplay games in the first tiebreak match. • See FIDE World Championship 2004 : Results for a summary of the five FIDE Knockout events.
Topalov's best showing in any previous World Championship event was the Dortmund Tournament, July 2002, designed to select a challenger for Braingames/Einstein World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. There he lost the final match to Peter Leko, +1-2=1.
At some time in 2007, Topalov will be seeded into the semifinal round of the next FIDE World Championship. Between now and then, we can expect to see frequent play by the Bulgarian, one of the world's most exciting players. And lest we forget, the magic word unification still enchants the principle actors in the World Chess Championship. If recent history is any guide, we can expect to hear a lot of talk -- it's on, it's off, on, off, ??? -- about a possible Topalov - Kramnik unification match.
For our earlier reports on the FIDE World Championship see Elsewhere on the Web -- The Players (17 September), Introduction (24 September), and Underway! (1 October).