Bulgarian chess grand master and contender for the world chess championship Vesselin Topalov won the super-tournament in the Spanish town of Linares, beating Boris Gelfand of Israel in the last round, Bulgarian media reported on February 25 2010.

The Israeli conceded defeat after the 62^nd move, nearly five hours into the fray. With his latest victory, Topalov accumulated a total of 6.5 out ot 10 available points and leapfrogged with half a point his main opponent, Alexander Grischuk of Russia.

The traditional Linares tournament is taking place in Andalusia, Spain, from February 13 to 24 2010. It is popularly known as the "Wimbledon of Chess", being one of the strongest annual chess tournaments alongside Wijk aan Zee Corus and the Dortmund events.

This year, the tournament has been scaled down to six contenders while a year earlier the players were eight and before that, there have been up to 14 players.

The event, sponsored by Spanish businessman Luis Rentero, was first held in 1978. At that time it was not an elite event and was won by the relatively unknown Swede, Jaan Eslon (on tie-break from the Argentine Roberto Debarnot). After the following year's event, it was held every other year until 1987 when no tournament took place

Topalov became the FIDE world chess champion by winning the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005.

The Bulgarian won the 2005 Chess Oscar and was ranked number one in the world from April 2006 to January 2007, and had the second highest Elo rating of all time (2813). He regained the world number one seed ranking again in October 2008, and officially remained top of the ladder until January 2010, when he fell number two, behind Norwegian Magnus Carlsen.