Viswanathan Anand (IND)	Veselin Topalov (BUL)
Champion	Challenger
Winner of the 2008 World Chess Championship	Winner of the 2009 Challenger Match
40 years old	34 years old
2788 FIDE Rating[1]	2810 FIDE Rating[1]
FIDE World Rank: 3	FIDE World Rank: 1

In the World Chess Championship 2010, the current world champion, Viswanathan Anand, will be challenged for the World Chess Championship title by Veselin Topalov. The match is scheduled to take place in Sofia, Bulgaria from April 23rd to May 12th 2010, with a prize fund of 2 million euros.^[2]

[edit] The World Champion

The defending champion is Viswanathan Anand, who has held the title for two years now. Anand won the World Chess Championship 2007 in an eight-player tournament, and he successfully defended the title in the World Chess Championship 2008 against former champion Vladimir Kramnik.

[edit] The Challenger

[edit] Qualifying

Gata Kamsky earned the right to play in the Challenger match by winning the Chess World Cup 2007.

In early 2006, FIDE announced the conditions for the World Chess Championship 2007: an eight-player tournament which included FIDE World Champion Topalov, but not "Classical" World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. FIDE later organized a re-unification match between Kramnik and Topalov (the World Chess Championship 2006), with Kramnik to take Topalov's place in the 2007 tournament if he was to win the match. Kramnik won the match and the reunified World Chess Championship, so Topalov was excluded from the 2007 World Championship.

In June 2007 FIDE announced that Topalov would be compensated by getting special privileges in the 2009 qualifying cycle: direct entry to a Challenger Match.^[3]

[edit] Challenger Match

Game 2 of the Challenger Match

The Challenger Match was an eight-game^[4] match between Topalov and Kamsky. It was played in Sofia, Bulgaria, between February 16 and 28, 2009.^[5]

After Kamsky won the World Cup, there was ongoing uncertainty about the location for the Challenger match. Topalov preferred his home country of Bulgaria, while Kamsky wanted to play in a neutral country,^[6] and his manager organized a bid from Lviv, Ukraine. FIDE awarded the match Bulgaria in February 2008, to Ukraine in June 2008, then back to Bulgaria in November 2008 because of problems with finances from Ukraine.^[7] Kamsky got a new manager, and met with FIDE and Topalov representatives during the Chess Olympiad,^[8] and on November 19, 2008 FIDE announced that the players had agreed to play in Bulgaria, despite Kamsky's preference to play elsewhere.^[9] The match was originally scheduled for November 2008, but the late change to Bulgaria forced the match to be rescheduled for February 16-28, 2009.

On February 26, 2009, Topalov defeated Kamsky in game 7 to win the match 4.5-2.5.

Challenger Match 2009

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Total
Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria)	½	1	½	0	1	½	1	-	4.5
Gata Kamsky (United States)	½	0	½	1	0	½	0	-	2.5

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: World Chess Championship 2009

• Official site of the Challenger Match
• Challenger Match at Chessdom.com