play, with White given 5 minutes and Black 4 minutes. Beginning with move 61, a three-second increment will be added following each move. If the game is drawn then the player with the Black pieces is declared champion. Topalov demanded that the match be played in silence, which would occur if the players followed the Sofia Rules, which were introduced to curb draw offers in some tournaments from 2005. Anand replied that he would not comply, prompting Silvio Danailov, Topalov's manager, to say "If Vishy doesn't agree to the rules he will be forced to, because Topalov will not offer him a draw and he will not speak to him." Seconds and help Anand had the same group of seconds who helped his preparation in World Chess Championship 2008: Peter Heine Nielsen, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Surya Ganguly and Radosław Wojtaszek. In a post-match interview Anand mentioned that Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov had also helped him in preparation and that Vladimir Kramnik helped during the match. Topalov's seconds were Jan Smeets, Erwin l'Ami, Ivan Cheparinov and Jiri Dufek. For preparation, Topalov also used a state-owned IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer with 8192 processors, running the latest version of Rybka. Previous head-to-head record Before the 2010 match Anand and Topalov played 67 games against each other at classical time control with the following statistics: Schedule and results The start of the match was delayed one day due to air travel disruptions caused by the volcanic ash emissions from Eyjafjallajökull. Anand was to fly from Frankfurt to Sofia on 16 April and was stranded because of the eruption. He asked for a three-day postponement, which was refused by the organisers on 19 April. Anand finally reached Sofia on 20 April, after a 40-hour road journey. The first game was consequently delayed by one day. All games started at 3.00 pm EEST (UTC+3), except Game 1, which began at EEST. Former FIDE World Chess Champion Alexander Khalifman, who analysed the 2010 Anand–Topalov World Championship match for the Russian chess magazine 64, stated in a subsequent interview that "The chess was very good, and in sporting terms it was always a heated struggle with no short draws. While the result was fair. Despite the fact that Topalov had prepared superbly, it has to be admitted that in terms of talent he is still inferior to Anand. And even the age difference didn’t tell. Anand is a