World Chess Championship Match!
A sport dividedWhen chess über-grandmaster
Garry Kasparov decided to separate from the World Chess Federation (
Fédération Internationale des Échecs or FIDE, pronounced "feeday") in 1993 in a protest because he wanted players to have more of a say in FIDE's activities, what resulted was a great schism in the chess world. Imagine if the top team(s) of NHL or FIFA decided to split off and play in a separate league or association.
So for 13 years, we've always had 2 separate world champions. As it currently stands, Bulgarian Veselin Topalov has been the FIDE World Chess Champion since 2005, and Russian Vladimir Kramnik is the "Classical" World Chess Champion by virtue of defeating previous champion Garry Kasparov in a title match in 2000 and then defended his title in 2004.
Kasparov himself retired from competitive chess last year after winning the prestigious Linares tournament for the 9th time. He cited as the reason a lack of personal goals in the chess world and expressed frustration at the failure to reunify the world championship.
Reunification matchThis is a huge event in the chess world! Game one is today.
For the first time since the 1993 split, this
FIDE World Chess Championship 2006 will bring the two titleholders together in a match to unify the World Chess Championship and determine the undisputed World Chess Champion.
The two juggernauts Topalov and Kramnik will play 12 games between Septemeber 23 and October 10 in Elista, Kalmykia, Russia, alternating between black and white. A win counts as 1 point, a loss as 0, and a draw as ½. If after the 12 games it's a tie, then they will play an additional game, somewhat like overtime in other sports.
I should add that a lot of the great reunification work was done by Syrian-born American grandmaster
Yasser Seirawan, for which I gratefully applaud him. By the way, he writes excellent chess books for beginners and intermediate players.
Topalov: creative and goes for the kill
Veselin Topalov is a 31-year-old Bulgarian. He currently has an Elo rating of 2813, the highest in the world right now.
(In chess, an
Elo rating is a number that measures a player's overall level and strength, calculated from the stats of games won and lost, and taking into account the relative Elo ratings of those opponents. To give you an idea, a really good casual non-tournament player might be 1000, an average regular tournament player might be 1600, and best player in Canada Kevin Spraggett is 2577. Kasparov at his peak was 2851, the highest rating ever recorded. Yours truly is about 1200 or 1300.)
Topalov is a highly creative player who likes to execute complex combinations. Topalov's games are usually rich in well-prepared novelties (new uncharted moves in the opening to throw off the opponent, who may have not studied or prepared for them). Like Babby Fischer, he always fights for a win, even when a draw might suffice. Kasparov has described him as having "energy and confidence on his side".
Kramnik: the computer brain in a painful shell
Vladimir Kramnik, on the other hand, is a 31-year-old Russian, currently ranked 4th in the world in FIDE's latest Elo rating list. He suffers from a rare form of arthritis, called
ankylosing spondylitis (a condition that over time causes fusion of the spine or bamboo spine), which causes him great physical discomfort while playing.
If both Topalov and Kramnik were to play against a computer, Kramnik would probably win more often, because as Kasparov describes, he has "a more profound undertanding of chess".
Who will win?Despite Topalov's higher Elo rating, Kasparov himself commented that Topalov isn't the favorite many assume him to be and that he expects a quite even match. In chess, both sheer intellect and brainpower (Kramnik's specialty) on one side and psychology, energy and confidence (Topalov's specialty) on the other side are crucial parts of the sport.
Personally I'll cheer for the Bulgarian, since I'm a bit of a Balkanophile, and I find Topalov's psychological type of play very exciting. (There was once a great Jewish Latvian chess grandmaster
Mikhail Tal who excelled at this. Like Dracula, he could outstare an opponent and completely crush them with his willpower. He was nicknamed "the Magician from Riga", and many critized his style as "nothing more than tricks". But hey, it's an unignorable human factor of the sport, and unless you're playing against a machine, these things matter!)
Like David Letterman said, It's a real pity that chess isn't televised the way the Olympics or FIFA or other sports are, because this really a huge event. Live broadcast and coverage of the games will be on
ChessBase and
FIDE websites.
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