Veselin Topalov
- December 8, 2025
FIDE World Champion 2005 – 2006, winner of the 2005 tournament
Highest Elo rating: 2816
Ranking: World No. 1 for a total of 27 months between 2006 – 2009
Tournament career: winner of 23 super-tournaments:
3-time winner of M-Tel Masters Sofia, Torneo Magistral Madrid
2-time winner of Tata Steel Masters
winner of Linares Chess Tournament 2010, second due to tiebreak in 2005
winner of Norway Chess 2015, Nanjing 2008, Bilbao Chess Masters 2008
and several others…
Chess Olympiads: gold individual medal on the first board
Why he deserved it:
The Bulgarian Topalov was only the FIDE World Champion during the split, but unlike most other FIDE World Champions, he was also the best player in the world. He was officially the top player for more than two years combined. He became the FIDE World Champion in 2005 when he won the tournament. Behind him were Anand, Svidler, Morozevich, Leko, Kasimdzhanov, Adams, and Polgar. After his victory, negotiations began for a unification match between Topalov and the classical World Champion Kramnik, so that chess would have only one king. The unification match indeed took place a year later and was accompanied by scandal – the famous toilet affair. Since then, Kramnik and Topalov have not shaken hands at tournaments and have not reconciled to this day. It was also the first match in history to use a tiebreaker for a draw. In the tiebreaker, Kramnik was stronger and thus became the only rightful World Champion.
However, not all days were over for Topalov. In 2010, he played a World Championship match against Anand, which he narrowly lost in the final game. After 2010, he participated in the Candidates Tournament three more times, but was not successful. In the last two (2014, 2016), he finished last.
Topalov was very successful in tournaments outside the World Championship cycle. He won the Tata Steel Masters and the famous tournament in Linares. And many other super-tournaments. His swan song came quite unexpectedly in 2015 when he won Norway Chess. Behind him were Anand, Nakamura, Carlsen, Caruana, Aronian, and others.
Best games:
Veselin Topalov vs Ruslan Ponomariov
Sofia 2005
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Miroslav Janeček graduated in English Philology at Palacký University Olomouc. Currently he works in Prague as a content editor for a large marketing company. His roots are in Opava - the historic and cultural centre of the Czech part of Silesia. That city is also the home of Slezan Opava, the chess club where Miroslav started to play chess, later went on to work as a youth coach and which he to this day proudly represents. As an aspiring chess publicist, he is the main author of articles on ChessDB.cz. In his free time, in addition to chess and writing, he also devotes himself to racket sports, history, and literature.