FIDE World Champion Vesselin Topalov has just won the Chess Oscar award for 2005. He collected 4376 points, first in the survey of Russian magazine 64.
Viswanathan Anand came in second. Levon Aronian of Armenia came in third. This is actually the exact order that I voted. Congratulations to Topalov!
The magazine’s ranking takes into account the votes of 361 journalists from 68 countries. Topalov received the support of 293 journalists, guaranteeing him the first place and the annual award. It was a well deserved award for Topalov! Congratulations!
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Toppy deserves it, congrats…
Easy choice this year
The Russian stranglehold has abated with Anand and Top on top.
When the Soviets won the world championship, what % of the champions were actually of Russian origin?
Michael C.M –>
I think that four out of the seven FIDE Soviet World Champions were of Russian origin, i.e 57%. Botvinnik (Kuokkala, near St. Petersburg), Smyslov (Moscow), Spassky (Leningrad) and Karpov (Zlatoust) were of Russian origin. The others were Tal (Lativa), Petrosian (Armenia) and Kasparov (Azerbaijan).
Alekine was Russian but certainly no Soviet.
In the post FIDE period Kramnik (Tuapse) would also qualify as a Russian Classical World Champion.
I did a bit of research and the village that Botvinnik was born in was actually in Finland at the time of his birth. The area later was absorbed in Russia.