American GM Fabiano Caruana shared his opinion on the match between Turkish GM Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus and Former World Champion Veselin Topalov. Caruana calls Topalov an overrated player, notes Veselin’s career successes, and evaluates his current performance.

Fabiano Caruana

Fabiano Caruana

American GM

“This match against Veselin…

Topalov Veselin was always a very fun player, I played a lot of games with him back in the day. But it’s been a decade since he’s been amongst the best chess players in the world…

I mean, the thing is — when you’re not working on chess, when you’re not playing chess for many years, and then you play a top player like Erdogmus — you’re going to suffer a lot. Even though he’s 14 — he’s a top player already, he’s Top-30 in the world, he’s a 2700 player.

Veselin was a juicy opponent because he’s still high rated. He was 2700+ when they played. Of course, he lost a large portion of that after the match. But, just to be totally frank about it, he was significantly overrated.

I would probably estimate his level around 2620 at the moment. It may sound very low, especially for a great champion like Veselin… But when you haven’t played for a decade — that’s just what happens, it happens to everyone.”

The Topalov vs. Erdogmus: Clash of Generations III took place from April 12 to April 17 in Monaco. Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus won with a score of 5-1, defeating Veselin Topalov 4 times and drawing with him 2 times. Erdogmus gained +22.4 points and became the youngest player to achieve a rating of 2700+ in history, at the age of 14 years and 10 months old.

Credit: Michal Walusza / FIDE