Veselin Topalov

Veselin Aleksandrov Topalov (pronounced [vɛsɛˈlin toˈpɑlof]; Bulgarian: Веселин Александров Топалов; born 15 March 1975) is a Bulgarian chess grandmaster.

Topalov became the FIDE World Chess Champion by winning the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005. He lost his title in the World Chess Championship 2006 match against Vladimir Kramnik. He won the 2005 Chess Oscar.

According to FIDE, which began ranking chess players in 1971, he has been number one a total of 27 months, which when compared to all others who have been so ranked, places Topalov in fifth place after Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer and Carlsen. He was ranked number one in the world from April 2006 to January 2007, during which his peak Elo rating was 2813, a peak which had been surpassed only by Garry Kasparov, and subsequently by Magnus Carlsen, Viswanathan Anand, Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, and Hikaru Nakamura. As of September, 2015 his all-time peak rating was 2816 in July 2015. This peak rating places him 6th all time on the List of chess players by peak FIDE rating.