Topalov Downs Kramnik For Title

By Arvind Aaron

Bulgaria's greatest chess player, Veselin Topalov, recorded his biggest career triumph when he won the MTel Masters Chess Tournament before his home audience at Grand Hotel Sofia in Bulgaria on Sunday.

Topalov, 30, ranked third in the world cashed in on a bishop blunder from world classical champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia to win with the black pieces in 34 moves. Only this March he jointly won the Linares Tournament beating Garry Kasparov in the final round. This back-to-back classical victory should help him move up the rating ladder.

Topalov won this category 20 tournament with a blazing 6.5/10 finish. Topalov was earlier tied for the last place at 2/5 after the first round robin but he did not lose heart. In the second cycle he finished in style scoring 4.5 from the last five games for a clear title. Topalov lives in Salamanca, in northern Spain and plays for native Bulgaria.

Requiring a victory, Anand as white faced the Sicilian defence, Taimanov variation from Polgar. They followed the Kasparov v Anand stem game from Linares 2002 until move 15. Polgar's 22nd move was new to theory and with very few pieces left the game was in balance. Anand tried the seize the initiative on the 36th turn with a rook for bishop sacrifice. He could not make progress as pawns were locked. A draw by repetition of moves happened on move 45.

Anand finished second but was half a point short of his expected rating score. After starting with all five draws in the first cycle of the round robin, Anand recovered in the second half winning two and losing one game. He could not catch up with the scoring of Topalov after losing to him in a crucial sixth round game.

The ban on draw offers in this event seem to have a bearing on the results as 12 games (40%) ended decisively and 18 were drawn. Many games were fully fought from dead equal positions. Three of Anand's games ended in lone king versus king. The show from May 12-22 was organised by MobilTel, a GSM Cellular provider of Bulgaria celebrating its tenth year together with Kaissa Chess Management.

Anand, the NIIT Brand Ambassador will next compete in the 18th City of Leon Tournament in Spain from June 9-13. The other three players in that meet will be FIDE World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzb), Alexei Shirov (Esp) and Magnus Carlsen (Nor).

The results (tenth round):
Vladimir Kramnik (Rus) 4 lost to Veselin Topalov (Bul) 6.5, Viswanathan Anand (Ind) 5.5 drew Judit Polgar (Hun) 5, Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukr) 5 drew Michael Adams (Eng) 4.

Final placings: 1 Topalov 6.5/10, 2 Anand 5.5, 3-4 Polgar, Ponomariov 5 each, 5-6 Adams, Kramnik 4 each.

The moves:

White: Viswanathan Anand - Black: Judit Polgar, round ten, Sicilian Taimanov, B49: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 Qc7 6.Be3 a6 7.Be2 Nf6 8.0-0 Bb4 9.Na4 Be7 10.Nxc6 bxc6 11.Nb6 Rb8 12.Nxc8 Qxc8 13.Bd4 0-0 14.e5 Nd5 15.c4 Nf4 16.g3 Nxe2+ 17.Qxe2 c5 18.Bc3 f5 19.Rad1 Qc6 20.f4 Rf7 21.b3 Rb7 22.Rd3 Ra7 23.h4 g6 24.Ba5 Rb7 25.Rfd1 Bf8 26.Qg2 Qc8 27.Kf1 Ra7 28.Ke1 Rb7 29.R1d2 h5 30.Kd1 Ra7 31.Kc2 Qb8 32.Qf3 Rb7 33.Qe3 Qc8 34.Rd1 Be7 35.a4 Bf8 36.Rd6 Bxd6 37.Rxd6 Qb8 38.Rxa6 Rf8 39.Bd2 Ra7 40.Rd6 Qc7 41.Qf3 Rb8 42.Rd3 Qb6 43.Rd6 Qc7 44.Rd3 Qb6 45.Rd6 Drawn.

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