Playing Style:
He has shown himself to be an extremely streaky player; on more than one occasion, Topalov has played poorly for part of a tournament, only to make up for this by stringing together wins with incredible play. His most famous streak may be the 6.5/7 he scored in the first half of the 2005 FIDE World Championship, after which he coasted to victory. These incredible streaks have sometimes led to (thus far unsubstantiated) accusations of cheating.
While Topalov plays a style that is crowd pleasing, he has lost some popularity among chess fans ever since his 2006 World Championship match with Vladimir Kramnik. After Topalov's accusations that Kramnik may be cheating led to a series of events culminating in Kramnik's forfeiture of Game 5 of the match, public opinion turned against him, blaming Topalov and his team for the near cancellation of the critical reunification match. Topalov would go on to lose the match after a series of rapid tiebreak games.
World Championship Matches and Tournaments:
2005: Won the FIDE World Chess Championship Tournament with a score of 10/14, 1.5 points ahead of Viswanathan Anand and Peter Svidler
2006: Lost World Chess Championship Reunification Match to Vladimir Kramnik in rapid tiebreak 2.5-1.5 (+1 -2 =1) after drawing initial 12-game match 6-6 (+3 -3 =6)
2010: Lost to Viswanathan Anand 6.5-5.5 (+2 -3 =7); Anand retains World Championship
Notable Accomplishments:
- Won three consecutive M-Tel Masters tournaments (2005-2007)
- Two first place finishes at the Corus Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee (2006, 2007)
- Shared first at 2005 Linares Tournament with Garry Kasparov
- Shared first at 2001 Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting with Vladimir Kramink
- Shared first at 1996 Dos Hermanas Tournament with Kramnik
