Former world chess champion Veselin Topalov made one of his rare appearances in recent years and took part in the first edition of the WR Chess Masters Cup supertournament in London.
However, the Bulgarian dropped out at the start, after losing 0:2 points to the Indian Vidit Santosh, who is in 22nd place in the world ranking.
In a clash of generations, the 49-year-old Topalov played two good games against the 20-year-old Vidit. In the first of these he lost in 40 moves with the white pieces, and in the second, in which he was with black, he had an equal position, but decided to take a risk and lost after 50 moves of play.
Among the other participants in the tournament are Topalov’s long-time rival Viswanathan Anand from India, the French Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Alireza Firuja, the Uzbek Nodirbek Abdusatorov, as well as the Swiss Alexandra Kosteniuk.
The tournament takes place between October 14 and 18, playing a direct elimination in two games with swapped color control for 60+30+30 minutes. In the event of a tie, a tiebreaker follows with a 15-minute game control. The total prize fund is 58,000 euros.