Topalov: “if someone’s looking to create a provocation they’ll always find something”
Seldom have truer words been spoken than these by Topalov in an interview with the Bulgarian Topsport newspaper.
Final interviews from Linares
Vasiliev’s final report on Linares 2010 was a bumper round-up of interviews with the participants, including Topalov’s pyramid theory of why he should only play for large amounts of money.
Online game commentary ends on cosmic note
In the Topalov-Aronian game at Linares Topalov missed a beautiful, hard-to-see but not hard-to-calculate, combination. His previous good luck combined with Aronian’s previous bad lack inspired a remarkable summary from one commentator.
Aronian and the Benoni
In the early rounds of Linares Aronian had promising positions but failed to collect any full points. That didn’t stop him providing good quotes for Vasiliev at Chesspro.
Kramnik: “If Topalov becomes champion it will be a disaster for chess”
Kramnik gave a fascinating and controversial interview to Michael Khomich at Sports.ru after winning the Tal Memorial in Moscow.
Kramnik on blitz
Fresh from winning the Tal Memorial in Moscow, Kramnik gave a couple of interviews where he talked about the upcoming World Blitz Championship, later won by Carlsen.
Svidler on Kramnik’s opening preparation, and Shirov’s top 5
Peter Svidler describes how Kramnik’s approach to opening preparation is not his thing, while Alexei Shirov sums up the top 5 players.
Karpov on the World Champions
Anatoly Karpov gave a long interview to the Russian RIA News. The most fascinating section is his assessment of his own place in the pantheon of Chess World Champions, including his controversial opinion that Anand and Topalov would have been unable to achieve the same success without computers.
