Congratulations FIDE Champion Veselin Topalov

Congratulations to Bulgarian Grandmaster Veselin Topalov for his magnificent performance at the FIDE World Chess Championships in Argentina. Topalov represents that kind of fighting, knife's edge chess that you don't see so much of these days, and it's about time he got some real recognition for his work. I was perturbed that a bizarre tiebreak system cheated him out of sharing the top honors with retiring Garry Kasparov at the Linares tournament earlier this year; I was more upset when Kasparov, explaining how he came to lose his last game as a professional player, said "What happened today had very little to do with my opponent. I simply collapsed under the pressure of playing my last game." Toppy had you beat in that game, Kaspy--be charitable. Sorry, I've had that on my mind since the spring.

This is of course not to say that Topalov is "World Chess Champion," as anyone familiar with the state of international chess will tell you. However, with luck the Bulgarian's thumping victory will accomplish two things: first, it may finally lead to a real unification match with flagging Vladimir Kramnik, who won the genuine World Championship title fair and square from Kasparov in 2000; second, it may be the last we hear from FIDE's 2004 "champion" Rustam Kasimjanov who, to be fair, had one great tournament in him--but in the 2004 Libya tournament, he didn't have Topalov gunning for him.