Topalov Enters the Generationally Great List (By Righfully Omitting Half of the Games)

Veselin Topalov played in the Fide World Chess Championship in 2005. It was a double round robin tournament with 7 other players. Peter Leko was there, along with Vishy Anand. Peter Svidler was present as well. A notable omission was that Vladimir Kramnik was not there. It looked like it was going to be a tightly contested tournament with such a roster. But, that was not the case. Topalov was just crushing the competition with 6.5 out of 7 in the first half. In the second half, he drew all of his games to still win the tournament with a comfortable point and a half lead over Svidler.

What am I to do with this information? The only sensible thing to do is to discount the entire second half of the tournament. Topalov’s G-score soars into the three hundreds as a result — as well it should based on his demolishing the other seven players. My list isn’t official (but I think it should be because it is based on fairness). So, here is my list of all of the generationally great and historically great chess tournament and match performances of all time with Topalov now among their ranks. Also, the last place on this list is Paul Keres, who was ordered to lose to Botvinnik I have read. All Keres ever said about it during his lifetime was that he was “unlucky.” Well, Mr. Keres, you have made my list through the magic of rounding off — your performance rounds off to 300, which is a generationally great performance in my book!