Veselin Topalov

Veselin Topalov became the world champion in October 2005 by winning the San Luis tournament — a double round-robin of the world’s top eight — by a margin of a point and a half. The title was the disputed FIDE title of the divided championship era, but the playing strength behind it was not in question: Topalov scored ten points from fourteen games, undefeated, against a field that included Anand, Svidler, Leko, Morozevich, and Adams. He held the No. 1 rating from April 2006 to January 2007, peaked at 2816 nearly a decade later, and remains the strongest player Bulgaria has produced.

Early years

Topalov was born in Ruse, on the Danube in northern Bulgaria, in 1975. He learned chess at age eight from his father and was identified as a prospect quickly within the Bulgarian system — the country had a small but serious chess infrastructure inherited from the socialist period. He earned the grandmaster title in 1992 at seventeen.

His longtime manager and second from the mid-1990s onward was the Spanish IM (later GM) Silvio Danailov, whose role in Topalov’s career — both competitive and political — was central to several of the controversies of the next two decades.

Through the late 1990s Topalov established himself in the world top ten. He played in the FIDE World Championship knockouts of the late 1990s and won several major tournaments: Madrid 1996, Dos Hermanas 1996, Sarajevo 1999.

The 2005 San Luis tournament

The 2005 FIDE World Championship was held as an eight-player double round-robin in San Luis, Argentina, in October 2005 — the format FIDE adopted after the 2004 Kasparov-Pono­mariov match was cancelled and the unification process stalled. Garry Kasparov had retired six months earlier; Vladimir Kramnik (the Classical title holder) did not participate.

Topalov dominated the tournament. He scored 6.5 from his first seven games, drew his last seven, and finished 10/14 — a point and a half ahead of Anand and Svidler. His preparation was visibly deeper than the field’s; his win over Anand in round seven, in a Najdorf English Attack, was considered one of the games of the year.

He became the FIDE World Champion in a single fortnight, and his rating soared into the upper 2700s.

The unification and Kramnik

The unification match against Vladimir Kramnik was held in Elista, Russia, in October 2006. The match was overshadowed by the “toiletgate” scandal — Topalov’s manager filed a formal complaint about Kramnik’s frequent visits to the bathroom during games, alleging the possibility of computer consultation. Kramnik forfeited game five in protest after appeals committee changed the playing arrangements. The match resumed but the atmosphere never recovered.

Kramnik won the tiebreak 2.5–1.5 after the classical score finished 6–6 (including the forfeited game). He became the unified world champion. Topalov returned to the rating list as challenger; the relationship between the two players, and between their respective camps, remained hostile for years.

Topalov continued to dominate elite tournament play. He shared first at Linares in 2005 (losing the tiebreak to Kasparov) and won Linares outright in 2010. He took the M-Tel Masters in Sofia three years in a row (2005, 2006, 2007) and was a regular winner at Corus/Wijk aan Zee. By April 2006 he was world No. 1, a position he held for nine months.

The 2010 World Championship

Topalov earned the 2010 World Championship match by winning the 2009 Grand Prix series and then the 2009 Sofia Candidates match against Gata Kamsky. The match against Anand was held in Sofia in April–May 2010 under hostile organisational conditions — a volcanic ash cloud had grounded Anand’s flight from Frankfurt, and the players’ camps disputed the schedule’s adjustment.

Topalov won game one with a sharp tactical squeeze; Anand levelled in game two and led after game four. The match alternated short, decisive games and long draws. With the score 5.5–5.5 going into game twelve — the final classical game — Topalov played a sharp Lasker variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined as White. Anand defended carefully and at move 32 Topalov fell into a tactical mistake; Anand won, and the match.

Topalov’s preparation in the match was considered second to none of the era, but his choice to push for a win in the last game with Black off-the-table was widely second-guessed.

After 2010

Topalov reached his peak rating of 2816 in July 2015, ten years after winning San Luis. He played in several more Candidates cycles, including the 2014 Khanty-Mansiysk and 2016 Moscow tournaments, but did not advance to a final match again. He won Norway Chess 2015 ahead of Anand and Nakamura.

He has remained an active classical player into his late forties, with frequent appearances in European team events, Olympiads, and smaller open tournaments.

Legacy

Topalov’s competitive legacy has three layers. As a tournament player, he was — for a five-year period from 2005 to 2010 — comparable to anyone in the world: he won Linares (2010), shared first at Linares 2005, won M-Tel three times, won San Luis, and led the FIDE rating list for nine months. As a champion, his title is sometimes diminished by the unification dispute, but the playing strength he showed in San Luis was at the top of the era. As a stylist, he represents a particular school of post-Soviet aggressive chess — deeply prepared sharp openings, willingness to take risks in time pressure, an unusual capacity for spectacular wins. His games are extensively annotated in opening monographs of the period for both the depth of preparation and the quality of execution — most notably his Black side of Kasparov vs Topalov, Wijk aan Zee 1999, still cited as the canonical example of a king-hunt combination from the engine era.

The 2010 match against Anand was the last World Championship match before the Carlsen era began. The combination of Topalov, Anand, and Kramnik — three players born within four years of each other — defined the World Championship picture between 2005 and 2013, and Topalov is the only one of the three never to have held the unified title.