Veselin Topalov

Veselin Topalov is a chess legend with accomplishments so extensive it is nearly impossible to list them all. Topalov earned the title of Grandmaster at the age of 17 in 1992 and ascended the world rankings over the next ten years.

The Bulgarian No. 1 became the FIDE World Chess Champion by winning the FIDE World Chess Championship in 2005. He lost his title in the 2006 World Chess Championship unification match against Vladimir Kramnik and was also narrowly defeated by Vishwanathan Anand in their match for the World Chess Championship title in 2010.

Topalov has competed at nine Chess Olympiads (1994-2000, 2008-2016), winning the gold medal on board one, with the second-best overall tournament performance of 2872 in the 2014 Olympiad in Tromso. Topalov has won countless super tournaments including Linares, Corus, Dortmund, Stavanger, Pearl Spring and 2015 Norway Chess ahead of Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana and Viswanathan Anand.

Like Kasparov, Topalov is known for his dynamic and uncompromising style. Retired from full-time play, he continues to compete from time to time. These events are usually held at fast time controls but there are exceptions including his match this year with the prodigy Yagiz Erdogmus where the age differential between the two was 37 years!

Kasparov and Topalov have faced each other many times over the years and the two uncompromising chess gladiators have quite a history. This includes a Chess 960 (Fischer Random) match in 2018 held at the St. Louis Chess Club won by the latter.

Kasparov has a clear edge in their encounters played at a classical time control and his victory against Topalov during the 2019 Wijk aan Zee tournament is considered one of the greatest games of chess ever played. Six years later Topalov got his revenge at the same event, defeating Kasparov in the latter’s last game before retirement.