By James Kilner
Mon Oct 2, 2006 3:52 PM BST
MOSCOW (Reuters) – It went down to the wire but in the end the Russian turned up to play.
A 12-round chess match between Russia’s Vladimir Kramnik and Bulgarian Veselin Topalov to decide the world’s top player resumed on Monday after a row over toilet breaks forced a two-day suspension.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, World Chess Federation president and head of the south Russian republic Kalmykia hosting the match, interrupted a conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin to broker a successful truce between the two teams at the weekend.
“It (the sixth game) started one hour ago,” Ilyumzhinov told Reuters from Elista, the capital of Kalmykia.
Kramnik, the reigning Classical World Chess champion, leads Topalov, the World Chess Federation champion, 3-2. The match has been billed as a reunification between the two rival chess organisations after a 13-year split.
Kramnik and his coach had threatened not to play the sixth game of the series on Monday unless organisers scrapped a game he forfeited on Friday.
The rest of the article can be read here. 