Based on his rating, Topalov was invited to the eight-player, double round-robin FIDE World Chess Championship in San Luis, Argentina, in September–October 2005.
Veselin Topalov | Veselin Vukotić | Veselin Vukotić (economist) | Veselin Vukotić (criminal) |
Shirov is the winner of numerous international tournaments: Biel 1991, Madrid 1997 (shared first place with Veselin Topalov), Ter Apel 1997, Monte Carlo 1998, Mérida 2000, two time winner of the Paul Keres Memorial Tournament in Tallinn, with victories in 2004 and 2005 just to name a few.
In the next four FIDE World Championship tournaments he was knocked out at the last sixteen stage: at Las Vegas 1999 by Michael Adams, at New Delhi 2000 to Veselin Topalov, at Moscow 2001 to Viswanathan Anand, and finally at Tripoli 2004 to Leinier Dominguez.
Arguably his most impressive international tournament success occurred at León in 1993, where he won ahead of Vyzmanavin, Topalov, Karpov and a young Peter Leko.
In the FIDE World Chess Championship 2004 in Tripoli, Libya, Kasimdzhanov unexpectedly made his way through to the final, winning mini-matches against Alejandro Ramírez, Ehsan Ghaem Maghami, Vasily Ivanchuk, Zoltán Almási, Alexander Grischuk and Veselin Topalov to meet Michael Adams to play for the title and the right to face world number one Garry Kasparov in a match.
In early 2006, FIDE had already announced the conditions for the World Chess Championship 2007: an eight-player tournament which included FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov, but not "Classical" World Champion Vladimir Kramnik.