one year after the WCC
There are only 3 days to the start of the World Chess Championship in Mexico. However, the noise from Elista still can be heard around. The “Toilet War” book that was published in May in Bulgarian has been translated and published in English under the name “On the Edge in Elista”. Besides Zhivko Ginchev’s original, the book contains all games annotated by Veselin Topalov himself.
The book is brought to the public by Chesscafe.com. The book review by Derek Grimmell says:
On the Edge in Elista is really two books in one. One is about the scandal, whose nature and development the entire Topalov team explains, with supporting documents, photographs, and cartoons (yes, cartoons). As Topalov and his staff have had ten months to put this manuscript together, we may regard it as their final word on the scandal that they first broadcast to the world…
It is in the annotations that Topalov comes across as the most natural and engaging. His notes resemble those of earlier annotators such as Botvinnik and Smyslov, relying as much on explanations as on variations. He shares many of the ideas behind the moves, rather than simply listing the brute-force calculations.
Chesscafe also publishes a recent interview with Topalov by Hanon W. Russell. It covers many topics, starting from Veselin’s life, the role of Silvio Danailov, cheating allegations, the video tapes, reffering old interviews, Nigel Short, the Fritz-Kramnik match, and computer chess. Read the full interview from ChessCafe.com
