In the coming fall, the chess world, which split after Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short decided to hold their match for the 1993 World Championship outside FIDE, can finally unite. The fact is that on September 21 in the capital of Kalmykia Elista, the opening of a duel is scheduled between the strongest (according to the rating) chess player of the planet, the FIDE world champion Veselin Topalov from Bulgaria and the classic champion - Russian Vladimir Kramnik.
Volodya inherited his title just “along the line of division”, defeating in 2000 the “great and terrible” who seemed absolutely invincible to Garry Kasparov. After that, as if to emphasize the uniqueness of the sporting achievement of his winner, Harry himself, who was thrown from the throne, began to win the super tournament after the super tournament and quickly restored both his sky-high rating and his reputation as the strongest chess player of all time.
Meanwhile, his winner, Vladimir Kramnik, was not too eager to fight and rather quickly reduced his results so much that his “classic” champion title began to turn into the subject of ironic jokes and remarks. So the regime of “triarchy” came to replace the already prevailing diarchy in chess, which looked more like, however, either a people's free-rein or an unregulated pluralism. The fact is that the “official champions”, that is, the FIDE world champions, with whom the winners of knockout tournaments were proclaimed, did not use what is called “authority in the team”, because, as a rule, they were not rated even in the first the top ten. The reason for this is the lottery character of the knockout system itself.
Everything changed in 2005, when, winning the next “Wimbledon chess” - a super tournament in Linares - Garry Kasparov announced his retirement from chess, and Veselin Topalov, who lost him only in additional indicators, soon brilliantly won the super tournament in Sofia, and then at the held in the autumn of the same year, the two-round world championship in the Argentinean San Luis and won the title of FIDE world champion. It seems almost unbelievable, but even having reached the top, the new champion continued his winning streak, which allowed him to reach the level of rating indicators that only Garry Kasparov had previously submitted to. In particular, now Topalov’s rating is slightly higher than the rate with which Kasparov left chess.
How did you meet the new brilliant chess world champion? Songs and flowers, fanfare and trumpets?
It was like that, but no less noticeable (at least among the professionals) was a paradoxical reaction based on considerations like “this cannot be, because this cannot be ever” ... Well, the grandmaster just has no right, for long years somewhere in the middle of the first ten worlds, suddenly start to beat everyone in a row! In short, Topalov was unofficially charged with covert use of analytical computer modules during a game, which (at the current level of the best chess programs) could really easily provide such amazing progress.
I want to emphasize that the rumors about “computer prompts” were based, in fact, only on one fact - the fact of a sharp increase in the sports results of the Bulgarian grandmaster, but, on the other hand, the suspicions themselves could indirectly increase these results. The fact is that some participants in the World Cup in San Luis sincerely believed in the "virtual-computer" version of what was happening - we won’t give their names, as a result of which, as they say, their hands fell. Because it is one thing to play with a living person (even with a very strong grandmaster), and it is quite another to compete in the score of options with a computer.
Yes, a person is still capable of this, however, when meeting with an electronic rival, you deliberately limit yourself, try to “dry” the game and avoid intuitive counting decisions, since a computer (unlike a person) with almost one hundred percent guarantee will detect any defect in your tactical design. However, denying yourself the right to dynamic risk, you find yourself in the position of a football team that completely excluded from its arsenal, well, say, long passes and a header.
Therefore, it is clear that in the general context of the struggle, even the fundamental (i.e. not used unnecessarily) ability to turn to the help of a computer is extremely important. So, vice-champion of the world Vichy Anand, in an interview with NTV Plus commentator Marina Makarycheva, immediately after the end of the championship, unexpectedly changed the topic of conversation and for no reason stated that if he had the right once of his choice (only once per game!) to take advantage of such help, I would prefer a “computer bonus” to any conceivable and unimaginable doping and any prelaunch preparation!
In a word, the problem is obvious, but the feeling that in this whole story the world champion Veselin Topalov can turn into a kind of Salieri, who, as you know, had nothing to do with Mozart's real death, because Mozart was simply not poisoned, does not leave me. However, this fact (with the help of subtle biochemical analyzes) was established only in the twentieth century, when “the train has already left” ...
So, to the main event of 2006 - the unifying match Kramnik - Topalov, the chess world comes up in an intriguing atmosphere of unsolved mystery and related rumors and conjectures. Nevertheless, the match itself - a match of equal rivals - is of great sporting interest, since the classic champion Vladimir Kramnik, who showed the absolutely best result at the Chess Olympiad in Turin, seems to have regained its former athletic form. Is this so, we will finally be convinced next week - at the end of the Dortmund supertournament, in which Volodya takes part.