Inside the Master Mind: Beating the World Champ
In today’s article, part of the Series “Inside the Master Mind” I want to show you one of my most memorable games, which tells the story of how I beat the World Champion in classical chess for 2005 and the player with the highest FIDE rating for 2009, GM Veselin Topalov.
This game was played in a simultaneous exhibition with 20 board, which he gave at the Sports & Culture Center in Varna in 2005, a little before he conquered the World Champion Title in Mexico with a categorically winning result. So, firstable, I would like to mention that this simul was part of the program of the European School Championship in Varna, which included the youth festival “The Hopes of the World” and a few other very interesting events.
In this competition, I performed quite well as I managed to win all of my games. In one of my previous articles for the rubric “The Best Games of a Chess Coach” – A Surprise in the Dutcch Leningrad, I showed you one of my best wins in the same tournament. Nevertheless, the most memorable moment for me then was my game against GM Topalov and the difficult defense which I had to create in order to keep the advantage I got in the opening and to win the whole game. Here is the game:
Before the beginning of the simul, my friend national master Ivailo Enchev and I decided to prepare something strong, with which to surprise the prospective world champion. We knew that he is going to play 1.e4 on board one, and 1.d4 on board two, so he sit on the first board and I – on the second, in order to be able to respond with my favorite Dutch Defense.
An interesting fact was that in the given simul I was the only one who managed to beat GM Topalov. After the game GM Topalov invited me to discuss our game, as well as to show where he could improve his position and play stronger. On the other hand, I also showed him some of the subtleties of the variation with 2.Bg5 in the Dutch, which he was listening with interest and approved.
