Topalov-Kramnik

Maybe it's for real this time. It's now on Kramnik's official website.

Also, Illumzhinov gave Russia's Sport Express correspodnent a few more details on the match.

The prize fund of one million dollars will be split equally between the participants, regardless of the outcome of the match. This was decided in order to show the equal status of both participants in the unification match.

The match will be held over twelve games, with classical time controls. In case of a draw there will be four games with shorter time control – 25 minutes per side.

(If the match is still tied at this point, there will be a blitz playoff.)

The winner of the Topalov-Kramnik match will play in the next FIDE World Championship in 2007. The loser, even if it is the current FIDE title holder Topalov, will have to start from scratch and play in the World Cup.

(The article doesn't explicitly state this, but the loser would be playing to qualify for the 2009 cycle and would be left out in the cold for the 2007 cycle.)

If true, this is a very exciting development. It would mean the first time that we have a universally recognized world chess champion since Kasparov fubar'ed everything back in 1993. (Yes, people forget or gloss over the fact that this mess is mostly to blame on his split with FIDE over the 1993 world championship match.)

Topalov v Kramnik 2006?

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is pleased to announce that the World Championship match Topalov vs Kramnik will be held 21 September - 13 October 2006 in Elista. Both players and their managers have agreed with all the technical details of the match, which will consist of 12 games, and the prize fund will be a guaranteed minimum amount of 1 million US dollars.

Seems to me we've heard this before. I'll withhold judgement until September 20.

April 2006 FIDE Rating List

1 Topalov, Veselin 2804
2 Anand, Viswanathan 2803 (first time rated over 2800)
3 Aronian, Levon 2756 (a meteoric rise from #91 in April 2003)
4 Svidler, Peter 2743
5 Leko, Peter and Ponomariov, Ruslan 2738
7 Ivanchuk, Vassily 2731
8 Morozevich, Alexander 2730
9 Kramnik, Vladimir 2729 (down 12 points and 3 slots from the January 2006 list)
10 Gelfand, Boris 2727
11 Adams, Michael 2720
12 Grischuk, Alexander 2719
13 Radjabov, Teimour 2717 (up from #46 in April 2003)
14 Polgar, Judit 2711
15 Bacrot, Etienne 2708 (up from #37 in April 2003)
16 Akopian, Vladimir 2706
17 Bareev, Evgeny 2701 (up 3 points from the January 2006 list)

Mamedyarov and Shirov both dropped from 2709 to 2699. Kasparov is rated higher than Topalov but fell off the list after one year of inactivity after his March 2005 retirement at Linares.

[Updated based on new list released by FIDE, where Ivanchuk had 8 points restored which had been incorrectly subtracted from his rating. - ALD 4/12/2006]