Summary
The action has been fast and furious at the FIDE world championship match now entering the home stretch in Elista, Russia. Unfortunately, too much of the excitement has actually occurred away from the chessboard.
With a win with Black in Thursday's Game 8, Bulgarian GM Veselin Topalov has knotted the score against Russian rival Vladimir Kramnik in the 12-game match staged to unify the divided world crown. But it is a degrading dispute over bathroom breaks that has dominated the news out of Elista, leading an angry Kramnik to forfeit Game 5 to Topalov and generating mocking news stories in press outlets around the globe. Whether the mud fight will irrevocably tarnish the overall match is still an open question.See the full content of this document
Extract
Forfeit Buoys Topalov
Just after we filed last week's column, Topalov's camp filed a formal protest over what it said were the suspiciously high number of restroom visits by Kramnik during the first four games.
The clear implication: that the Russian, up two wins to none at the time, was ...See the full content of this document
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