FIDE World Chess Championship 2005


The FIDE World Chess Championship 2005 took place in Potrero de los Funes, San Luis Province in Argentina from September 27 to October 16, 2005. It was won by Veselin Topalov.

Background

In the face of criticism of the knockout FIDE World Chess Championships held from 1998 to 2004, FIDE made changes for its World Chess Championship in 2005. It used normal time controls, and changed the format to an eight-player, double round-robin event, where every player plays every other player twice, once with each colour.
The players invited were:
Kramnik refused to play, as did the recently retired Kasparov. Their places were taken by the next two players on the FIDE rating list: Peter Svidler and Judit Polgár. Polgár's participation made the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005 the first and so far only small-scale World Chess Championship to have involved a female player.
The opening ceremony took place on September 27, the matches started on September 28, and the closing ceremony took place on October 16.

Results

Points by round

For each player, the difference between wins and losses after each round is shown.
The players with the highest difference for each round are marked with green background.
Final
place		Player \ Round1234567891011121314
1Veselin Topalov|BUL

Aftermath

declared before the tournament that they would regard whoever won as World Chess Champion. However, the non-participation of "Classical" World Champion Vladimir Kramnik meant that there were still two competing claimants to World Champion: FIDE Champion Topalov, and "Classical" Champion Kramnik.
Kramnik announced before the tournament that he should not be required to compete; but that as part of the "Prague Agreement", his defense of his title in the Classical World Chess Championship 2004 entitled him to direct entry to a match against the FIDE World Champion for the unified world title. After the tournament, he expressed his willingness to play such a match against Topalov.
Although Topalov initially declined Kramnik's offer, he later acceded. The two contested the FIDE World Chess Championship 2006 to reunify the title, with Kramnik emerging the winner.