The capital of Bulgaria – Sofia, hosted from May 12 to 22 the strongest tournament of this year, dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the largest Bulgarian mobile communications company. Leading international grandmasters were invited: Indian Viswanathan Anand (occupies 2nd place in the world rating of the International Chess Federation), Bulgarian Veselin Topalov (3), Russian Vladimir Kramnik (5), Englishman Michael Adams (7), Hungarian Judit Polgar (8), and Ukrainian Ruslan Ponomariov (20).
The main feature of the regulations of this competition was the prohibition for players to communicate during a game. A draw was determined only by the arbiter and only under the condition of threefold repetition of position, perpetual check, or if the position that arose was theoretically drawn. In all other cases the opponents had to play down to "bare kings." Although, in the second round the number of decisive games exceeded the number of draws, however, according to the participants themselves, this regulation had almost no effect on how they played.
FIDE World Champion 2002 Ruslan Ponomariov suffered a defeat in the first round. For the next three rounds he could not leave last place, but he also did not lose. With two victories in a row in the fifth and sixth rounds over Topalov and Kramnik, he seized the lead. Unfortunately, in the game of the penultimate round, already on move 15 Ruslan realized that the game was lost. With a lightning attack the game ended in Veselin's favor already on move 30. In the end, the Ukrainian raised his international rating by 9 points, returning to the "club of seven-hundreders" (those chess players whose rating exceeds 2700).
Final results of the competition:
Topalov - 6.5 points out of 10 possible Anand - 5.5 Ponomariov - 5 Polgar - 5 Kramnik - 4 Adams - 4
International Master of Chess, Oleksandr Biletskyi.