Veselin Topalov

Veselin Topalov (born March 15, 1975) is a Bulgarian chess player. He became the FIDE World Chess Champion by winning the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005. Topalov was awarded the 2005 Chess Oscar. In the April 2006 FIDE rating list, he was ranked number one in the world with an ELO rating of 2804.

Early Career

Topalov was born in Ruse, Bulgaria. He was taught to play chess when he was eight years old by his father. In 1989 he won the World Under 14 Championship in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and in 1990 won the silver medal at the World Under-16 Championship in Singapore. He became a Grandmaster in 1992. His current trainer and manager is International Master Silvio Danailov.

Topalov has been the leader of the Bulgarian national team since 1994. At the Chess Olympiad in 1994 in Moscow he led the Bulgarians to a fourth-place finish.

Over the next 10 years he won a number of tournaments, and ascended the world chess rankings. In the knockout tournaments for the FIDE World Chess Championship, be reached the last 16 in 1999, the quarter-finals in 2000, the final 16 in 2001, and the semi-finals in the 2004 tournament. In 2002, he lost the final of the Dortmund Candidates Tournament (for the right to challenge for the rival Classical World Chess Championship) to Peter Leko.

Topalov scored his first "super-tournament" success at Linares 2005, tying for first with Garry Kasparov (though losing on tiebreak rules), and defeating Kasparov in the last round, in what was to be Kasparov's last tournament game before his retirement. He followed this up with a one point victory (+4 =5 -1) at the M-tel Masters 2005 tournament, ahead of Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik, Ruslan Ponomariov, Michael Adams, and Judit Polgar. The average rating of the participants was 2744, making this super-GM, double round-robin tournament the strongest in 2005.

World Champion

On the strength of his rating, Topalov was invited to the 8 player, double round-robin FIDE World Chess Championship in San Luis, Argentina, in September-October of 2005. Scoring an extraordinary 6.5/7 in the first cycle, Topalov had virtually clinched the tournament at the halfway mark, before drawing every game in the second cycle to win by a convincing 1.5 points and become FIDE World Chess Champion. The average rating of the field in the championship was 2739, and Topalov's performance rating was an incredible 2890.

The unification between the FIDE World Title (held by Topalov) and the Classical Chess World Title (held by Vladimir Kramnik) has been fervently encouraged by the chess community and on the 16 April 2006, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the current President of FIDE, announced that a reunification match between Kramnik and Topalov will go ahead in September of 2006. Both players have agreed to the match.

In May 2006, Topalov defended his M-tel Masters title in the 2006 edition of the tournament, coming first with 6.5 ahead of Gata Kamsky with 6. Topalov started the tournament somewhat hesitantly to later record four consecutive wins and clinch the title.