Topalov wins second game with Black

Veselin Topalov won the second game today in his Challenger's Match with Gata Kamsky. With Black he answered 1.e4 with 1...e5 and came under pressure after grabbing a dangerous pawn, but Kamsky used too much time in the opening phase and couldn't make use of his activity.

The Kamsky-Topalov World Championship Semi-Final Match takes place February 16th to 28th in the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria. The Challenger’s Match consists of eight games and possible tie-breaks and has a prize find of US $250,000 which will be shared equally by the players. The winner qualifies for a World Championship Match against Viswanathan Anand.

Game 2 Like yesterday, we start with something that appeared on the official website. This time it was a note on the home page which said IMPORTANT, so we decided to read on:

In order to put an end to any attepts at speculation by match participants, their teams, and the public at large, the Organising Committee with the consent of FIDE publishes the full text of the signed agreement between Gata Kamsky and Veselin Topalov, as well as the agreement between FIDE and the Bulgarian Chess Federation on the organisation of the Challengers' Match.

Wow, that's not bad, not bad at all! Remember this column of January 7th? We praised Henrik Carlsen for stressing the importance of transparancy, predictablility and fairness. Well, at least we have some transparancy here!

Some quotes from the agreement between FIDE and the Bulgarian Chess Federation (full texts downloadable here):

The Organizer will host and finance all necessary costs of the Challengers' Match 2008, according to the official regulations of the event.

This includes: a. The amount of 250.000 USD as prize fund (net and free of all local taxes). b. The amount of 50.000 USD as contribution to FIDE. c. The amount of 25.000 USD as stipend to the Principals of the Challengers' Match 2008. d. The amount of 10.000 USD towards the preparatory budget of FIDE's Worid Championship Committee. e. The amount of 1,500 USD for renting the high power jammer system from FIDE.

TOTAL of 2a + 2b + 2c + 2d +2e = 336.500 USD

As always, FIDE make quite a lot of money themselves, and it would be interesting to hear from them on what it will be spent, exactly. And we needed Google to learn that the "high power jammer system" is destroying the possibility of using a cell phone within the playing hall.

The Organizer is given all the commercial rights connected to the Tournament, and is entitled to exploit all the rights, including but not limited to; sponsorship rights, ticketing rights, Internet rights, televisions rights, graphic, media, SMS rights, all kind of transmission through cellular phones, all sort of electronics broadcast rights aheady existing or to exist , souvenir rights, merchandising rights, advertising and promotion rights, as well as all the source of income through this agreements. The Organizer will print and distribute tickets, VIP passes and working passes needed to enter the Venue.

As was also noted by me (no, not yours truly, but someone who couldn't think of a better name), this paragraph is probably related to yesterday's post about the odd legal note referring to Playchess. It's still being discussed under yesterday's report, but the one question that needs to be answered is: can you copyright a chess move? This has been debated heavily over the years, and to our knowledge, the answer thus far has always been no.

Now, let's move on to the game! Since Kamsky's handling of the clock played such an important role in this game, we decided to include the amount of time he spent at several moments.

Name	Nat.	Rtg	G01 17/2	G02 18/2	G03 20/2	G04 21/2	G05 23/2	G06 24/2	G07 26/2	G08 27/2	Score
Kamsky	USA	2725	¬?	0							¬?
Topalov	BUL	2796	¬?	1							1¬?

Photos © Ivan Stoimenov - courtesy of the official website

Links:

• More background info
• Report of game 1
• Official website
• Games in PGN