Anand to start campaign with Topalov

Sofia:

Top seed Viswanathan Anand will start his campaign against Bulgarian stalwart and world number 3 Veselin Topalov in the first round of the MTel Masters chess tournament here. The category-20 double round-robin tournament will see Vladimir Kramnik competing with former world champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine while the other contests will be between Michael Adams of England and World's top rated woman Judit Polgar of Hungary. The tournament is the biggest event in Bulgaria since Anand last year played a short match with Topalov here. The unique feature of the tournament, being organised on the 10th anniversary of Mobitel, country's biggest mobile operators, is its well-designed rules that prohibit any mutually agreed draws between the participants at an early stage of the game. Herein, for the first time in the competitive chess history, the draws can be arrived at only through perpetual checks, repetition of position and in case of theoretically drawn positions on board. The organizers have also gone a notch ahead in appointing Georgian GM Zurab Azmaiparashvili as an adviser to the chief arbiter in case of such matters. Another important rule is that there will be no shared title in case of level scores and tiebreak and a fresh match of shorter duration between those involved will be played to determine the winner. (PTI)