Ever since the controversial decision by Garry Kasparov to organize his 1993 match against Nigel Short under the auspice of the newly found organization, PCA (Professional chess organization), two World Champions have existed simultaneously.

Already from 2002 and the infamous Prague Agreement, there was talk about the „unification“ of the chess title. However, throughout the years every negotiation somehow failed and the status quo remained.

It all changed in the year 2005 when FIDE decided to organize the 2005 World Chess Championship Tournament. Initially, their intention was to declare the winner the unified World Champion. However, Kramnik refused to participate in the tournament. Luckily, instead of deepening the rift in the chess world, he agreed to play the „unification“ match for the World title with the winner of that tournament.

After Topalov’s dominant performance in the 2005 World Chess Championship, the stage was set for the Kramnik – Topalov 2006 match, which would result in chess world finally having an undisputed World Champion after 13 years.

The match took place in Elista in Russia, from 23rd September till 13th October 2006.

Initially, everything seemed to go Kramnik’s way. Already in the first game, he managed to score his first win after Topalov avoided a three-fold repetition and went too far in his effort to play for the win with the Black pieces.

Then, Kramnik increased his lead after the second game in which Topalov failed to crown his brilliant attack with a „simple“ mate-in-three combination. After throwing the win away, he also failed to make a draw.

Considering the short duration of the match (12 games), Topalov found himself in a precarious situation. In collaboration with his highly aggressive manager Silvio Danailov, he tried changing the course of the match off the board.

Before the fifth game, Danailov issued a press release, in which he accused Kramnik of „highly suspicious“ behavior, allegedly claiming that Kramnik uses the bathroom too often:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The careful study of the video recordings from the restrooms done by the technical experts of the Bulgarian team revealed the following facts which we would herewith like to bring to your attention:

After each move, Mr. Kramnik immediately heads to the restroom and from it directly to the bathroom. During every game, he visited the relaxation room 25 times at the average and the bathroom more than 50 times – the bathroom is the only place without video surveillance.
Unlike Mr. Kramnik, the World Champion Veselin Topalov spends his time mainly at the playing table. The average number of times he visited the restroom and the bathroom is 8 and 4 respectively.

The FIDE Appeals Committee claimed that the accusations are „exaggerated“, but insisted that the common toilette should be installed for the remainder for the match. Kramnik’s team find this decision disgraceful, claiming that:

„The protests of the Topalov team into the direction of Mr. Kramnik and the suspicions in the press release of Mr. Topalov are utterly disgraceful and are touching Mr. Kramnik’s privacy.“

As a result, Kramnik refused to play in the 5th game and was defaulted. This was the first time that a player has won a game by default since the celebrated Fischer-Spassky match in 1972.

The future of the match was in great peril. Kramnik was threatening to abort the match. Numerous grandmasters held his side and this incident even brought Karpov and Korchnoi on the same side.

Nevertheless, after FIDE agreed to restore the initial conditions of the match, Kramnik agreed to continue the play, although his default would remain an open question until the very end of the match.

Due to the controversy, the whole match was christened as „Toiletgate“.

Anyway, the second half of the match turned out to be quite a close encounter. After his consecutive wins in games 8 and 9, Topalov even took the lead, three games before the end.

However, already from the Kramnik – Leko match Kramnik’s capabilities to fight with his back against the wall were well known. He leveled the score immediately in game ten by displaying his mastery in the Catalan opening.

After the final two games of the classical part of the match were drawn, rapid tiebreaks followed. In the tiebreaks, the players exchanged mutual blows, in games 14 and 15. However, in a final effort, Kramnik broke Topalov’s resistance in a positional masterpiece in game 16 and has managed to defend his title once again.

The incidents during the match would affect the relationship of the players forever. Even in 2017, the players weren’t on speaking terms, they don’t shake hands before their games and Kramnik has stated that he „doesn’t respect Topalov as a person.“